Monachopsis
by TNOandXadric
Summary: Wonderland is, the saying goes, a rusty clock in need of periodic winding-up. Alices make for good watch-winders, but only when they remember to show up—when they don't, well, who can say how long it will last before the gears to grind to a halt?
1. His Wonderland

**AN: **Some things to avoid confusion before we begin:

1. This is an extensive revision of a work that was posted here previously under the same name.

2. This is a crossover with an AU Once Upon a Time; specifically, the mechanics of magic and large portions of the details of the Mills family backstory are non-canon (although the broad strokes remain true to the show).

3. While I don't consider Monachopsis an AU in the strictest sense of the term, the nature of my world-building means that it does not, and _can _not, fit seamlessly into the canon of _Wonderland: A New Alice_ and Monachopsis is very much non-canon.

**Warnings** for self-harm and emotional and psychological abuse.

* * *

**Part One: March Hare**

His Wonderland

Before Morris even learnt to walk, Mother taught him to stand proud and secure in the support of his family. She used Family as a proper noun: Leporidae, a word he never dared allow his tongue to trip over, a word painted wheat-gold in her voice. Leporidae, the noblest and most unknown Family in Wonderland—and _he _is a Hare in addition to that, and that meant—this was the important part—he had a blood-born duty to protect and love and defend his country until the last beat of his heart. When he was a little older, she would take his perpetually-sticky hand in hers and lead him through Wonderland—always _his _Wonderland, always _his _responsibility, she told him a thousand times over—to acquaint him with the fragile land he was bound to by Family law and the blood humming through his veins.

He was a runty, skittish little boy with messy hair and a ratlike slant to his face, the sort of child who finger-painted with his food before he ate it and scribbled color onto every available surface. He had two brothers who were older and bigger and better behaved and a sister who put the whole lot of them to shame with her manners and brusque efficiency, but Mother focused her attentions—and affections—solely on _him_. She called him her_ sweet little Morris _and, after he and his siblings entered into the tutelage of a Family scholar whose stern refusal to indulge Morris's proclivities to chaos left Morris struggling to keep up, she spent painstaking hours teaching him herself.

After a frustrated outburst when he was about seven and couldn't understand and shouted that he _just couldn't_, Mother took his hand and led him out of the house without a word and that was when it all started to go wrong. It was a sticky kind of late-summer evening, the air leaden with humidity and the staticky whirr of cicadas, and for all that damp in the atmosphere, the grass was crackly and dry. He had no shoes, and the field felt like shredded paper beneath his feet.

They had walked, he close to jogging to keep up with Mother's long strides, his shoulder creaking in protest from the angle at which she held his hand, across the length of the field that separated the Hare forms from the Rabbit burrows. The burrow's gaping mouth opened underfoot without warning; Morris shrank back from the fetid heat pouring out of it, but Mother had murmured and squeezed his hand and there had been no choice but to proceed.

The burrow was hot and dark and smelled overpoweringly of wet hay. His hand had grown slippery from sweat, and his light summer clothes clung to his skin as Mother steered them deeper and deeper underground. They met no one along the way; Morris learned later that she had taken an obscure, seldom-used secondary route to ensure their privacy. That journey into the depths of the Rabbits' labyrinth had lasted forever until—at last—they reached a door. It was made of steel that was chilly to the touch, illuminated on either side by glowing crystals set into the burrow walls.

Mother had knelt in front of him, her hands on his shoulders. She said, "My sweet, you know that everything I do, I do for you?"

"Yes, mommy," he'd said.

"That it's to make you ready for what you'll need to do when you're grown?"

"Yes, mommy."

She kissed his forehead. "In this room is a friend who will make you very sick at first, but once you're better, it will help you so much more than it could ever harm." Her fingers cupped his chin, which had drooped on the word _sick_. "Chin up, my sweet little Morris," she'd said. "Be brave. Be strong for your Wonderland."

He had tried—_oh_, he'd tried—but his eyes still blurred with panicked tears as she opened the door, and his knees locked up so Mother had to push on the small of his back to get him to go in. The thunder of the door slamming behind him cut huge, bright bars out of the darkness; he had screamed as they rained down and thrown himself at the door, begging without result for it to open again.

It reeked of putrefaction and fire. Morris could see nothing but silvery pincers from a clicking noise he couldn't identify—they clustered in his peripherals and glowed brighter when he closed his eyes and clamped his hands over his ears in a futile attempt to blot them out. His memories become fractured and abstract after that: words made of tangled nonsense symbols carved into the architecture of his mind, blazing silver flames, endless running, the stench of vomit clogging his sinuses, thick, pea-green fog that poured down his throat and burned him from the inside out until it leaked out of his skin in huge, pearly droplets of sweat.

The vomit, at least, was real; when he woke up, his own sick was smeared over his chin and cheeks. There were clumps of it in his hair and down his front. He stood up and returned to the metal door, which opened at his touch. Mother was waiting for him outside with a damp handkerchief to wipe his face. "You are so brave, my son," she whispered, perhaps mistaking his silence for courage when all it meant was that he had forgotten how to scream.

* * *

He grew up. It took him only a few months to learn that it was not a _friend _in the strictest sense of the word that he met that night. The Protocol dwells in that chamber deep in the heart of the Rabbit burrows, and—he was to learn some months after his first encounter with it—all young Leporidae are brought down to become acquainted with it on their tenth birthdays. Meeting the thing that keeps Wonderland alive and in order is a rite of passage, the first measurable step of many on the climb to adulthood, and in usual cases entire litters go in together because larger groups are more likely to survive.

Mother never believed him to be a usual case.

He is the March Hare tonight—so freshly-minted that the old one's tea is still cooling on the desk next to which his body was found—so perhaps she was right.

* * *

He began to have nightmares in which he walked or ran or crawled down dark, pulsating corridors, tailed by rustling, insect-like sounds and glimpses of a silver carapace. His father—who figured in Morris's childhood mostly as a distant, impossibly enormous figure, often bristling with the requisite deadly tools of a ferret hunter—once expressed concern for the dark, purplish circles under Morris's eyes and the persistent cold that had been dogging him for months. It was late; Morris had awoken in a chill sweat and crept from the bedroom he shared with his siblings to crouch outside the door of his parents' room, expecting to take comfort from their nearness without waking them. His heart leapt into his mouth when he realized that they were not only awake already but talking about _him_.

Mother had said, "It's the Protocol, dearest. It will pass."

There was a sickly pause; Morris edged closer to the door. He heard bedsprings plinking as one of them moved, leaving orangey afterimages in his eyes which he blinked away as his father whispered, "What did you—Ele, Ele, what have you done?" and then, a moment of utter silence later, "Ele, tell me you didn't."

"I did what had to be done," Mother said.

Father exploded. "He is _seven_! Ele—" Mother shushed him then, and when he spoke next, it was in a low, furious whisper. "What were you _thinking_? He might have been killed!"

"I made him strong!" Mother snarled. "I gave him a fighting chance—he's different from the others, dearest. You know how he struggles to keep up—how he needs my help." The mattress plinked again, and Morris scrambled back from the door as footsteps followed—sharp-edged and pink, the exact curve of each note unique to the way Mother drove her heels into the floor when she was angry. She must have paced the length of the room twice over before she spoke again. "He's my son. I won't allow him to be looked over and forgotten. I won't let him live like—like some kind of _Pika_."

Morris had heard of Pikas only a handful of times before then: distant, distant cousins—not even proper Leporidae—and if the punishment his eldest brother, Cornelius, had received after calling Morris one were anything to judge by, applying the term to a Leporidae was an insult of the highest order. He felt tight and hot, as though his skin had shrunk several sizes or the house had grown suddenly very large. With burning eyes, he scrambled away from the door and returned to the warm nest he'd made of his quilt on going to bed hours earlier.

His sobbing had woken Cornelius, who grunted and threw a pillow at him. When that failed to stifle Morris's tears, Cornelius had asked, rather grumpily, what the matter was, and Morris gulped, hiccoughed once, and said, "Mommy _hates_ me."

"Don't be stupid, mouse-face," Cornelius said. "She likes you best. Everyone knows it."

"N-no," Morris said. "She hates me. She called me a Pika."

That had caught Cornelius's attention, so Morris had told him the whole story—the awful chamber in the burrow, the nightmares, what he'd overheard between their parents—and then squirmed, shivering, deeper into his quilt to wait for his brother's verdict. Cornelius was older by a whole hour and, in Morris's opinion at the time, infinitely wise. "So?" Cornelius had said at length. "She calls Cyrus 'n' me dumb Jackrabbits all the time. And Frances, when she's _real _angry."

"But—" For the first time it dawned on him that Mother treated him _differently_—that her tales of blood right and responsibility were reserved for him alone, though his siblings were no less Hares than he. Before he could work out what to say, Cornelius had ordered him to go back to sleep, and Morris had bit his lip hard enough to taste blood as he pulled a flap of the quilt over his head.

* * *

The job comes with living quarters: a three-room sod house with a thatched roof nestled between the trees on the boundary of the Tea Party clearing. There's a garden in the back, and the walls are plastered on the inside. An hour ago, it belonged to Haigha; now, it belongs to Morris. He wanders from well-stocked kitchen to cluttered living room to austere bedroom; the furniture he was so familiar with as an apprentice appears alien now that it belongs to him. The air tastes damp and feels colder than it really is; perhaps rigor mortis spread like an infection before the undertakers could get around to removing the corpse.

There are no blankets, the undertakers having apparently taken it upon themselves to strip the bed of its infection-riddled sheets, leaving the mattress bare and a bit forlorn in appearance. It rustles when he sits down, and he stares at it long after the fuzzy yellow lines of the sound have faded. His heart pounds erratically—hammering one moment, lethargic the next—as the Protocol finishes the necessary rearranging, edits the incomprehensible text emblazoned on his heart to read _March Hare _instead of simply _apprentice_. If he closes his eyes, he can see the symbols melting into the new order.

There should be some triumph here; he should be knocking on Mother's door to say _well, you see? I'm stronger than you thought_. There should be a kettle on in preparation for celebratory tea, and above all he shouldn't be alone in the darkening house with nothing but the creak of an old box spring for company.

* * *

His father was a well-respected ferret hunter in his time. Morris took after his older brothers and idolized him, albeit from a greater distance, as Mother forbade him from joining their sparring matches and play-fights on the grounds that he was too small for such violence. Once or twice, he disobeyed her; her wrath when she discovered his treachery dissuaded him from attempting to do so again. Afterward, Father made an effort to include him all the more when it came time for storytelling—Father had no shortage of tales about the feral and bloodthirsty ferrets who lurked on the fringes of Wonderland, out in the wilds beyond the croquet fields.

It was—as is often the case with ferret hunters—his job that killed him. Morris did not see, but he was awake when Father's partners delivered the news that his throat had been ripped out in an ambush. "He's dead, Eleanor," the tallest one had said. He held his helmet to his chest with both hands; Morris couldn't help thinking that it looked like a shield in case Mother took the news badly. "I'm sorry."

When it happened, they were on the cusp of their official introduction to the Protocol. Mother had no interest in arranging the wake; Frances dug up a candle from somewhere and his siblings burned it in front of the bathroom mirror on the eve of their birthday. Morris tried to join in, but Cornelius had cuffed him across the jaw, screaming that he had _no right _to be there and to go cry with mommy because that's all he was good for anyway.

He retreated to their bedroom instead to nurse his swelling jaw alone. His clumsy efforts were an abysmal failure, of course, and in the morning, Mother's lips thinned as she examined the inflamed bruise that had overtaken half of his face. A few seconds later, flashbulb _pop_ of her palm hitting Cornelius's cheek burned itself into his retinas so thoroughly that if he closes his eyes now, he can still conjure it up without effort. "Don't you _ever _hit your brother again," she had snarled, while Cornelius wailed and clutched at his face.

They made the short trip across the field to the burrow in uncomfortable silence. Cornelius made odd gulping noises now and again as he struggled to hold back tears; Frances walked next to him and held his hand, and Cyrus followed in their shadow, scowling at the ground. Morris, stranded in the vast space between them and Mother, felt like an intruder.

"I don't want to go," he'd whispered as they began the sticky, oppressively hot tunnels. Mother picked up his hand and gave no more sign of noticing that he let it dangle limply from her grasp than she did the fact that his siblings were lagging behind considerably. "Please don't make me." She ignored him; his chest seized up, and with a shuddering breath that he remembers to this day with crystalline clarity, he began to cry—soft, shivering sobs that lasted until he and his siblings were locked in with the Protocol.

He remembers this visit much more clearly than the first; the Protocol had already written itself into his heart and mind and had no need to do so again, so it had let him alone at first. The screams of his siblings painted the darkness inside the Protocol's chamber with tattered streaks of scarlet and the brown of dried blood while Morris cowered against the door with his hands over his eyes. It looked at him near the end—he saw it looking even through his palms, even with his eyes screwed as tightly shut as he could make them go—and he felt it _speak_ from the depths of his being, an inaudible jolt that reverberated through him with the strength of a thunderclap—

ẆͬH͋́̋ͪ̔͐͋E̓ͧRÈͯ̿̀̆̍ ͐̀ͧ͒̈͐W͒̓̋̇ͦ́ILͤ͂L̈́ͬ̒̎̀̑̐ ͧ͆ͨẎ̅́ͮ̓ͣO͌̈ͦU͌ ͊̄̋̒ͣ̔Ḡ̐̅O͊͂̊̔  
̀LI͌͂̅͐TͦT̍̊̋ͦ̋L̇̋E̍ ̑Hͩ̂AͨR͋ͭE̋͋̐̔͒ͬ͛  
͋̽DͥO ͐͛̊̾̒͂Ǹ͒̔̓̏O̿̋̔͑̚Tͬ̎ͮ̏ͣ͛͗ ͣͯ̏ͭͣ̀̚C̋R͂̓́̑Yͮ͌̿͐ͥ̉

—It was the first and only time Morris has ever heard the Protocol's voice. He hopes it will be the last; the aftershocks of the voice left him trembling for hours, and when he changed into his pajamas that night, he found the words spelled out across his chest in red-purple bruises which would take almost two months to fade.

He hasn't cried since that day, though there have been times he tried—for pain and sorrow and rage and beauty alike—for every time he feels the prickling of tears in the corners of his eyes, the Protocol constricts around his chest like a vice until his ribs creak in protest and his vision dims. The Protocol has owned him for twelve years, and it has little tolerance for disobedience.


	2. The March Hare Ascendent

The March Hare Ascendent

Morris lights a candle in the kitchen before he goes to Haigha's wake; the Hearts will host the event, as is proper for someone as important as the March Hare, but he knows the Queen's… tendency to show off will turn it into the kind of ostentatious affair Haigha himself loathed. It seems right to pay his mentor an _honest_ tribute before putting in his obligatory appearance at the public one, so Morris puts a little stump of a candle in a saucer and holds it in front of the grubby shaving mirror Haigha kept hanging over the kitchen sink. Only after the flame gutters out in a puddle of its own wax does he leave the house.

It is raining mistily; the tang of wet wool accompanies him to the croquet fields. He amuses himself by imagining the Queen's wrath if the poor weather forced the wake inside, but when he arrives, he sees that an enormous tent has been erected to prevent that very occurrence. A bonfire blazes in the center, in front of a standing mirror with a gilded flame—this is the only source of light, and Morris hesitates just inside the tent, transfixed.

The flames dance like fire, mingling with the indigo waves of a dirge flowing from a contra-bassoonist perched on a stool next to the mirror, and below that, undulating like water, is a kaleidoscope of conversation—hushed voices, soft tears, a smattering of melon-green laughter from the corner.

He is drawn from his reverie when a hand descends on his shoulder. It's a Rabbit Morris doesn't recognize. "My condolences, cousin," they say. "Settling in well, I trust?"

"Of course, thank you," Morris says. He smiles, or at least the corners of his mouth rise. The Rabbit gives his shoulder another pat before they disappear back into the fog of color; Morris buries his hands in his pockets and skirts the edge of the crowd. He meets another well-wisher every few steps—everyone is eager to assure themselves of the new March Hare's favor, though their smiles are fixed beneath glassy eyes and all the sentiments begin to bleed together because they all sound the same. He edges closer to the shadows lining the perimeter of the tent, though it does little to avoid the notice of the more determined networkers.

Halfway around the side of the tent, he catches a glimpse of the Queen herself presiding from a raised platform at the back of the tent—little more than scaffolding draped with velvet, though no one would dare suggest aloud that the set-up was anything but marvelous and tasteful. She is resplendent in a scarlet gown that has no place in a mourning ritual such as this; the crown on her head glitters and flashes in the firelight with almost deliberate malevolence. The King hovers behind her, puppy-like. Morris looks away before either of them can notice him watching.

She came from another land six years ago with her husband. The coup was swift, efficient, and comparatively bloodless. There had been a handful of executions afterward, before the Protocol quieted recalcitrant supporters of the old regime and the Queen set aside her odd notions about taxes. Things settled down again soon after that, but Morris has never been able to shake a niggling sense of unease where the Queen is concerned.

* * *

Haigha had been sick for years. Morris was sixteen when the symptoms first became apparent—itchy eyes, intermittent, uncontrollable sneezing fits, strange abscesses creating lumps beneath his skin—but it wasn't until a few months ago that it became truly _severe_. The infection, his doctors explained, had entered his blood—and once that had happened, there was little chance of saving him.

He was alone when it happened, but Morris had spoken to him only hours before. He was in the habit of stopping by the house in the mornings to make sure that his mentor had survived the night and ensure that he was in a fit state to host the Tea Party as soon as Time decided to spring four or six o'clock on them; on the day of the death, Morris had arrived a little later than usual. He found Haigha already awake and composing a letter to the Duchess of Diamonds over a bowl of porridge. Haigha's eyes were bright, his movements quick and precise—he looked far healthier than he had in months despite his pallor and the faint sheen of sweat on his brow.

"Oh, there's no need to look so surprised, my dear boy," Haigha had said. "Really, from the way you boys carry on, you'd think I was standing with one foot in the grave already." He thumped his own chest, chuckling. "There's fight in me yet, you know."

"You look better," Morris said. He stood up straighter; the doctors had been saying for weeks now that it was only a matter of time, that Haigha was on his way out, but doctors had been wrong before.

"I feel marvelous," Haigha said. "Simply marvelous."

Strange to think that had been a mere two days ago. Morris looks again toward the bonfire and its reflection, wondering if the twin images have carried Haigha's soul away yet, and where he would land when the last embers died—or if he was already gone, having found his escape in the reflected light of Morris's candle instead. Slipping out of Wonderland through a shaving mirror seems closer to Haigha's style, Morris thinks, not without a touch of bitterness directed at the Queen and her sense of grandeur.

* * *

The White Rabbit materializes next to Morris's elbow, breathing heard, just as a pair of low-ranking Hearts throw a new pallet onto the bonfire. He runs a hand through his shock of white hair and grumbles to himself under his breath for a moment before addressing Morris. "Her Majesty wishes to speak to you, cousin," he says. "Best not keep her waiting."

"Right. Yes." Morris should have seen it coming; the Queen would, of course, want to get the measure of the new March Hare during the final passing of the old one. It's only good sense. "Thank you."

He makes toward the scaffolding that supports the Queen's throne; the White Rabbit throws out an arm to stop him. "The house treating you all right?"

The house is as damp as it was the first night, though warmer. Morris spent part of the morning arranging for a sale of Haigha's furniture, and for his own belongings to be moved in from the forms. It is not _his _house yet, but it will be soon; the Protocol will facilitate the transition. He can feel it working already. "It's just a house, cousin."

"March is just a month, too," the White Rabbit said, shrugging as he gives Morris's shoulder a firm pat. "You come talk to me if you need anything. It's different, being public." He nods toward the Queen. "Her Majesty's waiting for you. Go on."

Morris has never spoken to the Queen before, though he—like all Wonderlanders—has been taught the tricks of doing so without provoking her wrath: don't make eye contact, don't speak unless spoken to, if spoken to agree with everything she says, be flattering within reason but don't make it ridiculous, take cues from her husband—if he flinches, it means the conversation has taken a turn onto thin ice—and mimic his mannerisms whenever possible. The ones who cower and grovel are the ones who make it out alive.

He approaches the Queen with his insides at a rolling boil, a cold sweat prickling along his neck. To get there, he must wade through the crowd; sounds and bodies seethe around him—he bounces between them like a piece of driftwood being buffeted from wave to wave.

The Queen crooks a finger at him when he stops at the foot of the scaffolding, so he hauls himself up the ladder to stand on level with the throne. The King catches his eye for half a second and looks away, swallowing noisily. "Enjoying yourself, I trust?" the Queen says at once. Her voice has the texture of crushed velvet, surprisingly soft given that she has a reputation for unusual cruelty even for a Queen. Morris keeps his gaze trained on her feet and tips forward into a bow.

"As much as I can, your Majesty," he murmurs. "Haigha was like a father to me." He watches the King in his peripherals; his expression remains blank, his gaze fixed on the bonfire below. Morris takes this to be a good sign. "I can't thank you enough for your help in seeing him off. I've no doubt he would be honored were he still with us."

"Indeed," she says, with severity Morris didn't expect. He wets his lips, his mouth dry. "Our dear, departed March Hare was a close friend of mine," she adds after a moment, her tone more wistful now. Morris risks a glance at her; she, like her husband, stares at the bonfire. Her expression is ice. "A very dear friend."

"I'm sorry," Morris says.

"People die," the Queen chirps. "And if there's one thing this miserable little land does with efficiency, it's transitions."

"Just as you say, your Majesty," he says.

She brings her hands together with a sharp _snap_ that makes him jump; he looks up at her and finds her eyes boring into him; in the dim, indirect light of the bonfire they appear pitch-black and empty. He suppresses a shudder. "Now. My dear March Hare, I do hate to bring up business at such a sad time, but I'm afraid there are a few important unpleasantries which must be dealt with. There is, first of all, the matter of my proposed tariffs on tea imported from the Glassland. Your predecessor was always… stridently opposed to the idea. I'm sure you're aware." Below, a burning pallet snaps, and the bonfire lets out a great shower of sparks. The Queen's eyes glitter.

"I'm aware, your Majesty." Haigha had been opposed to them for good reason; limiting the scope of the Tea Party by making their guests _give them things _in exchange for services rendered stood against everything the Tea Party was created for, no matter how many times the Queen tried to couch it in terms of _improving Wonderland's economy_—whatever that meant. "I'm afraid my stance is no different than his was, however."

Her lips thin. Morris swallows hard; the inside of his mouth goes instantly as dry as paper. "He taught you well, I see," she says at length, in a much colder tone than before. "Do let me know the moment your opinion changes."

"I will, your Majesty," Morris says.

The Queen dismisses him with a perfunctory wave, and Morris bows deeply before scrambling down the ladder with as much haste as he can manage without falling or appearing rude; as his feet touch the spongy grass of the croquet field once more, he lets out a relieved sigh. Surviving his first encounter with the Queen is, he feels, no small feat. The White Rabbit, who is lurking in the deep shadows beneath the scaffolding and visible only because of the checkered white suit he wears, gives him a little thumbs-up.

"First time's always the worst," the White Rabbit whispers.

Morris nods. The smothered terror of the last few minutes has caught up to him with the force of a charging bandersnatch; head spinning and with legs no more substantial than steam, all he wants is to flee back to the comforting darkness of the forest, finish his mourning over a hot cup of tea, ignore his new responsibilities for the remainder of the evening—but of course, they're _responsibilities_, and he's obligated to meet them. No one wants a March Hare who can't keep his head held high for the duration of a party, grief or no. He is more than halfway through the evening; if he keeps to the edges and smiles at his well-wishers, he can survive without further incident.

* * *

The bonfire begins to burn down toward midnight. The contra-bassoonist ends his dirge as those in attendance gather to watch the flames die and the embers go dark; this is the end of Haigha's time in Wonderland, and after this, there will be no more need for pain on the part of those he left behind—at least in theory. Morris has his doubts. The crowd parts to let him take a place in the front, closest to the fire. Nothing needs to be said, for which he is grateful.

He hears people shifting behind him and a muttered, "Now, _really_—" and then, before he can even look around, he feels the presence of another person beside him, so close that their arms are nearly touching. Morris knows who it is without having to look; no one can accomplish stony, pointed silence quite like Franco.

* * *

He started climbing trees a few weeks after his father died. Wonderland had become noisier or else the sounds touched his mind with heavier fingers than they had before. He tried to scream and rage and weep, to let the pressure out any way he could, but of course the Protocol squeezed his chest whenever he tried and he spent his time perpetually short of breath. Height had been an escape; he would climb until the branches creaked underneath him in protest of his weight, and then rest his cheek against the rough bark and close his eyes to breathe in the darkness. Even with his eyelids shut tight, he could see the glittering, shifting quilt of sound—birdsong and rustling leaves, the beat of his own heart and the screams of cicadas, like a symphony—but it was easier to bear without the added input of his eyes.

Breaking branches are livid, jagged orange—he knows that now. It happened very high up, and Morris fell too fast and unexpectedly to hear his own scream. A fist of leaves smacked him in the jaw about halfway down—it had seemed so ridiculous in the fraction of a second remaining before he hit the ground, and then the snap of his own arm had flashed in his eyes, the same color of the branch that gave out on him.

A guest had found him and brought him to the Tea Party—the first time Morris had ever set foot in the clearing, and he was too busy gagging as the Protocol tightened around his head and chest like a vice to keep him from crying to appreciate what was happening. Haigha had responded with utmost professionalism, sent Morris into the house in the care of the apprentice at the time and then carried on with his charges as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Franco was the apprentice; he was a few years older than Morris and the first Jackrabbit he'd ever seen up close. He made tea, jasmine to dull the pain, and sat next to him until a doctor had come from the Family hospital to put Morris's arm in a splint. And after that…

…He'd been a good friend.

* * *

"Hello, Franco," Morris says.

"I have _nothing_," Franco says coldly, "to say to you."

_Then why are you here? _Morris wants to ask. Perhaps Franco means his presence as some kind of passive-aggressive torment, a reminder that by all rights it should be Franco, not Morris, who took the March Hare's seat at the party, or maybe it's simply a need for closeness to someone else who knew Haigha well, or something else that Morris can only guess at—but no matter what the truth is, Franco isn't likely to tell him.

"I'm sorry," Morris says instead. Franco grunts.

The remains of the bonfire begin to collapse; sparks billow up with the smoke as charred wood gives way and the flames gutter. It won't be long now. The corners of his eyes burn, and Morris grits his teeth as the Protocol sends a warning spasm through the muscles between his ribs. He rips his gaze from the fire to glance up at the Queen instead. She sits so still she could have been carved from marble. The King leans over her shoulder, his jowls quivering as he whispers urgently into her ear. Whatever he's saying, the Queen must think it unimportant; she lifts one hand and shoos him away with the air of someone waving off a fly, and he retreats a few steps and bows his head.

He can feel Franco breathing beside him, his shoulders expanding every time he fills his lungs. The sound of it—palest grey, translucent and misty around the edges—cascades down beside him like rain, flickering in and out of focus every time Franco shudders. Morris doesn't look at him; he doesn't want to see his old friend's tears in case they turn out to be contagious.

* * *

When the last visible light from the bonfire snuffs itself out, an audible release of breath ripples through the crowd. Morris closes his eyes and adds his own, almost involuntary contribution. His heart gives a lurch as the Protocol adjusts itself a final time—a single silvery letter morphs in the darkness behind his eyelids. If there was any doubt before—if there was even the slightest chance that Morris could have conceded to the other, older candidate for the position—it's gone now. He _is _the March Hare so deeply that he can feel it singing in his bones.

Nothing has changed outside when he opens his eyes. At a single word from the Queen, electric lights flare to life around the perimeter of the tent. The wake is over; Morris is free to go home and, Time permitting, try for a little sleep before the Tea Party in the late afternoon. He looks around, another, final apology rising in his throat, but Franco is already long gone, elbowing his way through the rapidly-dispersing crowd without a backward glance. Perhaps it's for the best.


	3. Guests and an Absentee

Guests and an Absentee

He sets the table. The clink of china sounds lonelier when it only comes from him; during his apprenticeship, he had Franco and Haigha for company and between the three of them, they filled the clearing with sound. Alone, he struggles to keep the silence at bay—it's so quiet that if he slows down at all, he starts hearing his own pulse in his ears and beneath that, the low, omnipresent hum of the Protocol as it percolates through the earth beneath his feet. He puts the water on to boil early today; the water's roar and subsequent shrill whistle from the kettle do far more to cover the silence than the clink of tableware ever could.

There are infinite blends and only a limited number of teapots, which means he must be more selective with the day's teas than he would like; Haigha filled all but one of them with standard fare—earl grey in the willow pot, darjeeling in the cast iron, oolong in the ancient Yixing pot that's been around since before the first Alice, green in porcelain and black in ceramic—and saved the final pot, an enormous glass affair that Haigha often joked could double as a fish bowl, for a rotation of the more exciting blends. Morris sees no reason to disrupt the practice; today's special tea is a particularly strong lemon ginger, and the steam rising from the glass pot makes the inside of his nose tingle when he breathes it in. The teas draw a line down the center of the table, like centennials holding vigil from their perches on their pot warmers.

He keeps a close eye on the pattern of shadows across the clearing as he sets out sugar and milk and waits for the teas to finish steeping; Time is fickle all over Wonderland, but nowhere so much as the Tea Party, and Morris has lost an otherwise perfect brew to a sudden rush of several minutes more than once—tea is an art-form, and no March Hare would be so gauche as to serve tea that had gone too far and become bitter. Today, there is no such problem, and he is just fishing out the last infuser when the Dormouse, Monard, trundles into the clearing. He goes at once to the roots of massive oak tree that dominates the clearing, digs his fingers into the earth and, with a twitch of his tail, pries up the trap door that hides his pantry.

"Help me with this," Monard says with a grunt as he hefts a jar of clotted cream almost as big as his head out of the pantry. Morris hurries to comply; within the next few minutes, they've unpacked the whole of the pantry and the tea has been joined by scones, cucumber sandwiches, crumpets, teacakes, shortbread, and fruit curd in addition to the clotted cream. They've barely finished when Monard collapses into his chair and begins to snore like an engine. As if this is the signal that Time had been waiting for, fifteen minutes stutter forward in the space of one and four o'clock hits them with a light breeze and the arrival of their first guests: the Dodo, looking smug in a velvet smoking jacket which is, in fact, smoking, and a snub-nosed little field mouse Morris knows as Polly, although he's heard them give their name as everything from Gertrude to Maximilian.

The Hatter is, of course, late, but that happens with such frequency that no one pays his absence much mind. Morris ushers the Dodo and Polly into their seats in the Hatter's place and pours their tea—green for the Dodo, oolong for Polly—baring his teeth in what he hopes is a smile when the Dodo clears his throat and says, "I was so dreadfully sorry to hear of Haigha's passing—couldn't attend the wake, I'm afraid—Caucus business, you see—"

"I understand you're busy," Morris says. The Dodo offers him a rather patronizing smile—the same one he'd seen the Dodo point at Haigha many times, like he's weighing up the competition and finding it wanting.

"Yes, well," the Dodo says after a moment, with a disdainful sniff. "Our dear Elizabeth of York keeps bothering me to start a bank. Not the kind you find along rivers—it's to do with that… coinage program of hers." He takes a sip of his tea and winks at Morris, who stares back stonily. "She still seems to be laboring under the impression that little bits of polished metalappeals to a broader audience than our dear friends the magpies." His gaze sharpens. "I expect she's still after you to allow those… what does she call them? Tariffs?"

"She is," Morris says.

"Mmmm." The Dodo lifts his eyes skyward. "Strange little outlander Queen," he murmurs after a moment. "She has no idea what she's in for, does she, even after all these years… We do not take things sitting down, here in Wonderland, hm?"

"Leave me out of it," Morris says.

"You won't be able to stay _out_," the Dodo says. "Times like these, you'll be forced to pick a side." He sets his teacup down with a loud _clink _and drives a finger into Morris's chest. "Be sure it's the right one, Hare."

Morris slaps his hand away; the Dodo leans back in his chair, taking up his teacup again and staring across the clearing over the rim of it. Polly catches Morris's eye and offers him a dramatic impression of being sick into their cup as he stomps off to pour himself some darjeeling. He takes in a long, deep breath, forcing lightness back into his shoulders and resettling his expression into something friendly and welcoming; whatever the Caucus has planned, it needn't involve the Tea Party, regardless of the Dodo's dire predictions to the contrary.

At six past the hour, the Hatter bursts into the clearing with an unintelligible shout. His jacket is inside-out and his hat looks as if it's been recently sat upon; when Morris offers him a cup of his usual earl grey, the Hatter brushes past him without so much as a glance. "Clean cup, change seats!" he bellows. Morris nudges Monard awake and half-throws him into the next chair over while Polly and the Dodo see to their own rotation.

"There's to be a race," the Dodo says loudly as the Hatter takes his seat and Morris pours for a newcomer. The Hatter snorts. "Tomorrow. The Looking Glass Steppe. Four rounds, beginning at noon sharp."

"The Tea Party isn't an advertising platform for your little circuit," the Hatter growls, looking up from his empty saucer to glare at the Dodo. "It's a respectable organization. We have the Queen's _highest _recommendation." He brandishes a pair of sugar tongs down the length of the table. The Dodo cocks an eyebrow, but makes no argument. As soon as the Hatter returns his attention to his saucer, though, the Dodo looks toward Morris and his other eyebrow joins the first in its climb to reach his hairline. Morris looks away.

It's a bit pitiful, as parties go. A few casual attendees come and stay for only a few minutes before wandering away again; the Dodo excuses himself at half past and Polly trots away in his wake, shooting a wistful glance over their shoulder before the two of them vanish into the depths of the forest. At a quarter to five, Monard awakes from his slumber at the Hatter's prodding and clambers to his feet to declaim a poem, backwards so it comes out like complete gibberish. Morris drinks most of the tea—it seems a shame to let it go to waste—and keeps an eye on the shadows, hoping they won't decide to loop back to four o'clock or jump ahead to six before the Hatter declares the Tea Party at an end; that way, he'll be able to clean up and get on with things.

With a few minutes to go before the turn of the hour, the Hatter checks his watch, mutters to himself, and stands up so suddenly that he upends his chair. "Clean up this mess," he barks, pinning Morris with a glower before he stomps off down the path. Morris closes his eyes and props himself on the table as the nervous energy he'd been running on evacuates his limbs in the space of a breath; Monard snorts awake and gets to his feet, reaching for the dirtied dishes.

"I can do that," Morris tells him. If Monard stays he'll only offer inane small talk because they don't know each other well enough for anything else, and automatic chatter of that sort is bound to just make the static clouding his thoughts even worse. Monard bobs his head and scurries off.

* * *

His first Tea Party—his first _proper_ Tea Party, when he wasn't out of his mind with pain from a broken arm and ribs—happened about a month after he fell out of the tree, and he went alone, without his Mother's support. The music was spectacular—bouquets of pink and blue and gold flecked with green—a frog had been playing a massive sarrusophone while the Hatter conducted with a cup, slopping tea everywhere; the harmonies spun and arched overhead in a whirlwind of dissolving colors. It was—still is—the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

He crouched for some time in the shadow of the trees, unnoticed by the guests and frozen with something close to awe until a mangy, one-eyed cat spied him. It had hissed and started up the chorus of _no room, no room_—even the hedgehogs dancing a jittery two-step on the far end of the table had picked it up—but before Morris could run, Franco had swept out of the crowd, thrown an arm around his shoulders, and steered him to the table while Haigha fetched a little chair out of his house. "There's always room for family," Franco had muttered, clapping him on the back before pouring him his first ever cup of darjeeling.

Morris returned every day after that; today's was not the first party he'd attended that fell flat, but it was the first that had done so under his watch, and it was only the third party since Haigha had died—the first since the wake.

* * *

The oak tree that dominates the clearing was hollowed out decades ago by an enterprising soul and fitted with cabinets and a little pull-out sink; it's a boon to Morris even if the imagined geometries that make the plumbing work do give him a pounding headache if he looks at the tangled pipes too closely. He fills the sink and closes his eyes, letting the fizzy turquoise splashes wash over him. If any part of his new position can be considered soothing, it's this.

A branch snaps behind him, and he flinches as the painful orange sears across his closed eyelids. "Party's over," he says without looking around.

"I'm aware of that," the White Rabbit says, huffing. Morris opens his eyes and shuts off the water; the sink is almost full. He adds soap, still not turning around as the White Rabbit draws nearer. "I've got bad news." He reaches the sink; he's swapped out his usual all-white ensemble for a scarlet waistcoat that looks completely ridiculous for it's sharp contrast with the official jacket and the Rabbit's ashy skin. Morris tosses a spare dishcloth at him.

"You can at least make yourself useful, then," he says. "I'll wash, you dry."

The White Rabbit sniffs, eyeing the dishcloth with evident distaste. After a moment, though, he removes his gloves with overdramatic care and puts them in his pocket. "Dirty job," he mutters, shaking his head. "Absolutely dreadful."

Morris ignores him in favor of removing his coat and rolling up his sleeves before submerging the first set of dishes into the hot water. The heat stings his hands, so he flexes his fingers once or twice to get himself accustomed to the temperature. "What's your news, cousin?" he asks after a moment of silence. The White Rabbit twitches.

"My name's Cole. You can use it, you know." He clears his throat. "Alice was scheduled to visit a few days ago." He takes the cup Morris hands him and gingerly begins to pat it dry. "On the day of Haigha's passing, in point of fact."

"She didn't visit," Morris points out. His mouth has gone dry; to his knowledge, an Alice has never missed her appointment before.

"No, she didn't," Cole says. "Of course, no one knew—it's meant to be a surprise—and I hoped she might merely be late, but…" He wrings the dishcloth through his fingers, his chin trembling. "The Rabbit Hole's gone into flux again. It barely listens to me at the best of times and I went to check on it today and—gone. I haven't the slightest idea where it's off to now and there's still no sign of Alice. I'm really at a loss."

Morris frowns into the dishwater. Cole says nothing more, and they get through half of the first stack of dishes in silence. "I don't know what you expect me to do about it," Morris says at last. "Alices aren't really my area."

"Well, no," Cole says. "Of course not. But I had to tell someone, and—well, if I went to another Rabbit I'd be replaced, like as not." His nose wrinkles. "Besides. You've got the Tea Party—everyone passes through here sooner or later. You'll be able to keep an eye out for—for goings-on."

"Goings-on," Morris repeats flatly. Cole nods.

"Anything out of the ordinary."

"You're asking me to spy for you," Morris says. He hands the last dish over and sinks the next stack under the water. "Doesn't the Queen have people for that?"

Cole lets out an irritable huff. "You know very well that the Aces won't take orders from _me_." His voice drops to a whisper as he adds, "And laypeople aren't supposed to know they exist, either, so hold your tongue. Someone might hear you." Morris rolls his eyes and flicks a bit of water at him; Cole yelps as it splatters onto his waistcoat. "I'm just _worried_, that's all. Who knows what the consequences might be?" He sniffs. "Anyway it's not _spying_. Just collecting stories."

"Sure," Morris says. "Call it whatever you want." He rubs at a speck of congealed jam off the edge of a saucer and doesn't answer until all even the stain is gone. "I'll keep an eye out and an ear to the table, but I can't promise much. There's less gossip at the parties than you might expect."

"I'd be grateful in any case," Cole says.

Now that he has what he came for, Morris expects Cole to leave posthaste, but instead he stays. He makes no further effort to continue the conversation, keeping his head down as he does the work, for which Morris is grateful. It gets the job done twice as fast, and more than that it's comforting to have another person there to stave off the silence—even without talking, Cole makes enough noise to fill the immediate area, the scritch of his shoes in the dirt as he shuffles in place and frequent, half-vocalized syllables as he mutters to himself. After the dishes are done, he helps Morris stack them in their cabinets and then bids him goodnight and dashing off to his next appointment before Morris can so much as say _thank you_.

He spends a few minutes dusting stray crumbs off of the tabletop and onto the ground for the beetles and ants and whoever else cares to bother with them. There's a little tear in the corner of the tablecloth and he makes a note to get up early to patch it, but other than that, his duties for the day are done, with, from the look of the shadows, about two hours before sundown. On a normal day, and especially one as disappointing as this, he would retire into his house now to busy himself with personal affairs—there are teas to choose and blends to experiment with, deals between the Tea Company and the family to arrange, and he likes to paint sounds on slow evenings—but tonight, after what Cole said about Alice…

He stashes his coat in his house and leaves the clearing behind. The path will take him in the opposite direction of where he wants to go unless it happens to be in an unusually conciliatory mood, so he follows his nose instead and heads for the distant scent of salt. Soon it is overpowering; sunlight pours between the last few trees, and Morris shields his eyes in preparation as he steps from the soft soil of the forest onto the large granite outcropping beyond.

The air blazes. The granite is so warm he can feel heat rising through the soles of his boots, and a few feet ahead, a mirage of water smears over the rock. It is always high noon here, and as he scrambles up the steep slope toward the crooked tower at the top, sweat begins to bead along his forehead and crawl down his back. There are trees here and there, runty, shriveled little things that managed to dig their roots down through the rock and avoid the salt crusts everywhere to find enough nutrients to survive, but they provide little protection from the relentless sun and he's eager to get to the only shade available.

This is the site of the first Rabbit Hole—long since fossilized now, an enormous, crumbling stone tower filled to the brim with boiling salt water. There are doors all around the base of the tower, all locked; from under the smallest one flows the Weeping River, which cuts a path through the granite all the way to the sea and leaves salt crusted in its wakes. Some of the larger doors have awnings; Morris ducks under the broadest of them. It is still stifling and, this close to the tower, oppressively humid, but the shade at least diminishes the sunlight's glare.

He clears his throat and says, "I know you're here."

For a few seconds more, the only sound is water gurgling out of the tower. Then, with a faint hiss, the shimmery outline of a cat—of _the_ Cat—appears. It solidifies with a _pop_, and Morris finds himself confronted with a broad grin that showcases far too many teeth. "Lucky guess," the Cat purrs.

"You're not as unpredictable as you think," Morris says.

"Maybe," the Cat says with a careless shrug. He moves back a step, his tail slicing back and forth as he whips his rather crumpled trilby off his head and sinks into a bow. "What can I do for you, March Hare?"

Morris eyes him warily for a moment—he is inclined to be wary of anyone with canines that size—before he says, "It seems we're missing an Alice." The Cat hums, returning his hat to its previous perch between his ears. "I need you to take a message to the Caterpillar."

"What makes you think I'll do that?"

"Everyone knows you're xyr friend," Morris says, folding his arms. He can feel the fabric of his shirt sticking to the small of his back—he's in no mood to draw this out any longer than it needs to be. "And Rilchiam holds no threat to someone of your… talents." He can't be completely certain of this, of course, but he imagines anyone capable of vanishing like the Cat does would have no trouble navigating the infamously nasty flora and fauna that haunted the isle where the Caterpillar makes xyr home.

Sure enough, the Cat grins. "_Sí. _That's true." His tail swishes a little harder. "What's the message?"

"That we need xyr help, or advice at least," Morris says. "This has never happened before—we'd rather not be reduced to wandering in the dark." It feels odd, to be using the Family _we _when knowledge of this is restricted to himself and Cole, but the Caterpillar would have to be consulted sooner or later, and Morris has the authority to do so as the March Hare. He straightens his spine and tries to believe it.

"I'll see what I can do," the Cat says. His grin stretches even wider, almost ear-to-ear. In a lilting sing-song, he adds, "But no promises. Nothing is ever simple with Zeb." He begins to go fuzzy around the edges as he speaks; by the time he finishes, nothing is left but the flash of the sun off his teeth.


	4. Wonderland Steeps

Wonderland Steeps

Two days go by before Morris is summoned to the palace. It is almost a relief when a courier frog arrives with the rather damp invitation; he had known it was only a matter of time before the Queen tried again to coerce Morris over to her side, and the waiting made him nervous more nervous than any talk of politics ever could. He leaves the frog with his own half-finished cup of tea—it would be the height of rudeness to turn a guest away with nothing, but he doesn't dare delay long enough to put another kettle on so the frog will just have to make do with left-overs—and sets off for the palace at a fair clip.

He is greeted by Cole, who shows him into a little antechamber made even smaller by the addition of a huge fountain in the center. Cole leans toward Morris and squeezes his forearm with some urgency as soon as the door shuts behind them. "She's in a foul mood," he murmurs. "More than usual, I mean—Dodgson knows why—anyway, be _careful_, cousin."

Morris assures him that of course he will, and Cole leaves him alone with the promise that a page will be along in a moment to summon him into the throne room to face the Queen herself. He takes the opportunity to straighten himself up a bit, resettling his coat on his shoulders and removing a smattering of cerulean paint from his hand with the use of a handkerchief dipped into the fountain. He is just checking to make sure there is nothing caught in his dreadlocks, which tend to attract leaves and feathers and bits of thread if he's not careful, when the second door to the antechamber—this one larger and far more ornate than the one through which Cole brought him here—swings open. A courtier in a scarlet uniform that dwarfs them marches in. They look, Morris thinks, not unlike a puppy, with big round eyes and and overlarge ears—they can't be much older than ten.

"Her Majesty will see you now," they say, gesturing for him to proceed through the door and into the chamber beyond. Their expression offers no hint as to what they're thinking as Morris moves past them.

The Queen is seated on her throne. Her scepter, an intricate braid of brass and gold that blossoms into delicate ruby petals at the top, lies in her lap; she caresses the length of it with one finger—crooked at the tip, like she broke it years ago and it healed wrong.

"March Hare," she says as he moves into the throne room. Her knuckles go white as she tightens her grip on the scepter, and then she relaxes again and gives him a smile that is nothing but teeth. "Come closer. Have you devoted any further thought to my earlier proposal?"

Morris shuffles toward the throne, until he is close enough to pick out individual strands of her dark-red hair and the steel in her eyes. There will be no chance for blatant denial today; he's certain of that, not if she's doing this again so soon because he's new and untried, easy to intimidate because he would be easy to dispose of—there is even a ready-made replacement who is no doubt _itching _to see Morris fail because it will mean he can have the job himself—and once he gives in and the first part of her scheme goes into effect, the rest will fall into place by necessity. His knees feel like water, but what choice does he have?

"I have, your majesty," he says. His voice quavers out of his control and then cracks on the last syllable, and the King is not around to signal if this is the sort of thing that will provoke the Queen to wrath, but Morris keeps going anyway. "I… don't pretend to _understand_, exactly, b—"

He stops mid-word because the Queen's nostrils flare. All that keeps him from sprinting for the exit is the knowledge that, even if he did make it out of the throne room, there are Spade guards posted at every corner and the Aces of Hearts are rumored to lurk in the shadows of the palace's corridors. "It isn't that difficult a concept to grasp," the Queen snaps. "Gold lays to rest all the inefficiencies of your hopelessly backwards and oftentimes _inexistent _little bartering system. It will make your lives _easier_; I don't know why you _resist _so."

Her ire seems to be directed less at Morris himself and more at Wonderland in general; he smooths his vest out with trembling fingers and clears his throat. "If… I may be so bold, your majesty, some of the contention does come from the use of _gold _rather than… anything else." The Queen crooks an eyebrow at him and makes a tiny _go on _gesture, so he straightens from the cower into which he had fallen. "There isn't much gold in Wonderland, you see, and it's not very useful, as metals go. It's too soft. It's not _valuable_, and certainly not as valuable as tea."

That's the crux of the issue, really. The Queen has spoken at great length about her vision for the gold standard and how money would make everything much easier all around, but the fact of the matter is that no matter how much arbitrary value she places on a worthless metal, Wonderland will always run on tea, at the surface, and the Protocol underneath that.

"It is representative of more than its parts," the Queen says stiffly.

So is tea, and moreover tea is an all-purpose remedy to a host of maladies real and invented, so Morris would frankly rather have a single tin of tea than a whole ton of gold. He keeps this sentiment to himself. "To be sure, your majesty," he says, wetting his lips. "But I-I think you'll find the public less… open to convincing."

The Queen scrutinizes him for a moment, her lips pursed. "Your answer is still no, I take it?"

"…I believe a change at the present time could do more harm than good, your majesty," Morris says. It's as close as he dares to hint at the Dodo's ongoing talk of rebellion; any specifics will doubtless end in executions, but the Queen _must _know that she faces vehement disagreement throughout Wonderland. She will know what he is alluding to and no one will get hurt on his account.

She dismisses him with a curt nod, clearly uninterested in carrying on a pointless conversation and no doubt secure in the knowledge that he will have to cave eventually or risk losing his head. If not today, it will be soon. He bows and makes a hasty retreat, feeling shivery and as though he has dodged a blade.

* * *

He goes back to the forest by way of the meandering route that passes the Leporidae complex. The family is spread throughout Wonderland, but the core of it is located in the northern outskirts of the Frangible Forest. There is a great, dry field, which separates the main entrance to the sprawling labyrinths of the Rabbit burrows from the topside Hare forms; during daylight hours, the field buzzes with activity as Leporidae cross between the two and children box or race or amuse themselves with whatever games their imaginations can conjure up.

Morris himself never played outside much as a child, as Mother preferred to keep him close and safe from harm—she had a very broad definition of harm when it came to him—and he's always been a little curious about just what goes on in the games being played. They look, to his inexperienced eyes, immensely complicated. Today, he stands in the shade of the scattered trees that mark the end of the complex, hands in his pockets as he tracks the frenetic movements of his cousins. A pair of little Jackrabbits—distinguishable from the rest by their tatty clothes, which no Hare child would be allowed outside in—sprint past a mere yard from him, yelling and shrieking though not, he thinks, in pain.

His brothers, he recalls, yelled a lot whenever they were playing. It never appealed to him, even on the rare occasion he managed to join in. Shouting was too loud and too bright for his taste, and for a while he'd been convinced that Cornelius and Cyrus only did it to drive him off.

"They're Lysander's kids—she cooks for the Hearts. You don't know her." Franco's voice spirals out of the forest behind him, and Morris twitches in surprise and looks around. Franco ambles out of the forest, looking past Morris in the direction the Jackrabbit children had gone. "Live down near the Pool of Tears." Now he does look at Morris, his expression inscrutable—he looks a bit angry, but then something about the set of his eyebrows and the shape of his mouth makes him look a bit angry all the time. "You know they'll get run off if the wrong person happens to catch them? It'll be because they're too loud or too rowdy and never mind that there's a trace of Rabbit kits mucking around with firecrackers across the way."

"Oh," Morris says.

Franco folds his arms and glares out at the field. "Your ma threw me off your front step more than once. Didn't want her golden boy going about with bad influences."

"…I didn't know that." Mother had, to his knowledge, never actually _met_ Franco, just heard about him second-hand from Morris's detailed accounts of the Tea Parties and, a bit later, working for Haigha alongside Franco. Mother had made a few dark comments about Jackrabbit boys who never came to any good whenever he brought Franco up in conversation, but he hadn't paid them much mind.

"Now you do," Franco says.

He settles back into the stony silence he used at Haigha's wake, still glowering across the field. Morris scuffs the toes of his shoes in the dirt and tries to work out what Franco wants him to say. A simple _I'm sorry_, however heartfelt, does not seem to cover the extent of what happened. They had never spoken much about Franco becoming the March Hare—Franco was not the type to talk about himself or his ambitions unless pressed, and Morris was not the type to press—but he _had_ seen how much time and effort Franco devoted to the job, had watched his normally temperamental friend keep his mouth shut and his eyes fixed on the table whenever someone asked what a _Jackrabbit _was doing wielding the pots, had fidgeted on the outskirts while Franco interrogated Haigha on minutia like the proper way to pack infusers, things that Morris would never have even _thought _to ask about.

It had been an accident, really, that Morris got the job at all. The messenger who brought the news of Haigha's death had gotten confused and come to Morris first, perhaps mistakenly thinking that a Jackrabbit would not be Haigha's first choice. Morris could—_should_—have corrected him, but in the heat of the moment… Could he be blamed for seizing an opportunity he wanted desperately and would never have again?

He sneaks a glance at Franco, whose jaw is working so hard that Morris almost expects to hear his teeth splintering, and lets out a long breath. His friend—former friend—has every right to be angry. "I _am_ sorry," he mutters.

Franco snorts but doesn't look around. "Sure," he says. "Apologies are cheap, aren't they? 'specially after everything's gone your way." Morris winces. "I'm leaving Wonderland," Franco continues after a moment, sighing. "Rumor is there's work with the Tea Company. Thought you should know."

"I—" He almost wants to say _thank you_, but given the circumstances, it feels too condescending or perhaps just cruel. "Good luck," Morris mumbles instead, looking down at his shoes, which are much dustier than they were a few minutes ago from drawing lines in the dirt with his toes. Mother would be ashamed; she felt that clean and well-polished shoes were something of a mark of status.

"I don't want you to contact me," Franco says.

Morris nods. He keeps looking at his shoes as Franco turns on his heel and walks back into the forest.

* * *

He had meant to visit his mother—he hasn't seen her since the night of Haigha's death, and she must be desperate to hear details of his new position—but thinking about doing so now just makes him feel sick to his stomach. For a few minutes more, he skulks amid the trees, hoping that the sensation will fade, before he gives up and turns his back on the complex. Mother can wait a few more days, and he has a Tea Party to get to anyway—although that, too, sets his insides churning.

Monard is already at the table when Morris arrives. His pantry is open, but there's no food on the table save for a lone bowl of strawberries and Monard himself is curled up in the Hatter's armchair, drooling copiously on the worn velvet upholstery. Morris gets the tea things ready with unusual stealth, having no desire to wake him up; he is not in the mood for conversation with anyone, particularly not Monard, with whom he shares nothing but a devotion to tea. He doesn't think he's ever had a conversation with the Dormouse that didn't revolve around the party.

It occurs to him, with a painful twinge somewhere in the region of his duodenum, that now that Franco is gone, he doesn't really speak to _anyone _about anything other than Tea Party business or, in Cole's case, Alice.

He squashes the thought at once and begins to fill the infusers while he waits for the water to boil. His timing is good—this is one of the first things he learned from Haigha—so he settles the last one into its pot just as the kettle begins to whistle. The steam billowing up as he pours is comforting, and the sick feeling in his middle eases a little. There's nothing he can do now to change what he did—best to just move on as best he can.


	5. First Blood

First Blood

Years ago, Franco dared him to race to the top of the Pool of Tears. It was a dangerous climb—more so for Morris than Franco, who'd always been the taller and more athletic of the two—and a long one, made longer by the merciless sun and the salty steam that leaked from the top of the tower and made what handholds their were slippery with moisture. Morris had slipped a time or two, but every time, Franco had been there to throw out a hand and prevent him from falling.

When they reached the sun-blackened summit, they had perched on the thin, crumbly ledge and looked into the water. It was only a few inches below their toes, hissing and popping as air bubbles rose to the surface and burst, great columns of vapor billowing up around them. There were sodden bits of splintered wood and a film of dead insect bobbing against the inner walls of the tower. A bubble had burst right underneath them, and scalding droplets of water had leapt up to splatter across his knuckles—he still has faint scars running along the back of his hand from the burns.

"Will it ever drain all the way, do you think?" Morris had asked, once the Protocol had tamed the searing sensation down to a mere sting. Franco snorted and told him not to be stupid; nothing ever changed in Wonderland. That was, after all, what the Protocol was _for_—preserving their way of life, protecting them from Wonderland's inherent instability.

He had been unable to stop debating possibilities with himself over what would happen if the Protocol _did _fail them, if the Pool of Tears ran dry or any number of other things stopped working. He'd imagined, then, that the tower might dry up and begin to crumble into dust, or else burst into flames without the water to absorb the heat of the sun. Foolish, childish delusions, for all that he'd been fifteen and well on his way to adulthood by then—it had been vaguely amusing at the time, though now, faced with the Protocol's failure to ensure that Alice arrived at the proper time, thinking back on it makes him feel rather ill.

It has been close to a month and he has not yet heard back from the Cheshire Cat, nor has eavesdropping on his guests at the Tea Party brought any new information to light on the Alice front; most of the teatime conversation is taken up with the Queen's economy and the vehement resistance from the Caucus. The Protocol kept this argument from escalating out of control the last time it arose six years ago, and Morris can only hope it will do so again even if that does mean they'll have to muck around with bits of worthless metal instead of doing the sensible thing and just balancing commodities organically to ensure that everyone has what they need to survive.

Better, surely, to have the Queen's economy than face a bloody uprising? Because it will be bloody, if it comes to fighting—the Queen's guillotine has been quiet of late, but she didn't hesitate to put it to use last time she needed to quell an uprising and if the Caucus forces her hand now, Morris has little doubt that she'll do so again.

He and the Rabbit have taken to conferencing in the early morning, before the sun has even cleared the horizon in most places. By mutual if unspoken consent, they avoid both the Heart Palace and the Frangible Forest; they meet instead at the mouth of the Weeping River, a secluded, rocky stretch of beach where the roar of the tide coming in and the river burbling into the sea means that they will not be overheard by any casual passerby.

On most days, their hurried conversation amounts to little more than mutual confirmations that no, there has been no news in either of their spheres of interest; today, Cole keeps Morris waiting for almost an hour past the usual time before he bursts into view from the distant tree line and sprints to where Morris is lounging on a large rock. There's blood on him—Morris smells it before Cole even draws near enough for Morris to see it smeared on his usually pristine gloves and spattered up his left sleeve. He hops off the rock at once.

"What happened?!"

Cole shakes his head and spends the next few seconds wheezing, leaning on the rock for support. "The Queen's pregnant and the Duchess of Spades—well—she's no longer with us," he says when he's caught his breath again. With quick, jerky movements, he rips off his gloves and drops them with a visible shudder. "She didn't watch her tongue, and the King is… too slow on the uptake to have done anything about it." His eyes are wide and a little unfocused. Morris nudges the bloodied gloves aside and, with a hand on Cole's shoulder, steers him onto the rock.

"You're in shock," he says.

"It was all so _fast_… She snapped her fingers and the Aces came out with an axe… I had to clean up the head…"

Cole looks up at him, and this close Morris can pick out the faint blotches of yellow where the color must have bled out of his skin after he became the White Rabbit, and it strikes Morris that Cole's not really that much older than Morris himself—the old White Rabbit was executed a mere five years ago, one of the last victims of the period of unrest that followed the Queen's takeover. There had, to Morris's knowledge, been only two genuine executions since then—the King had gotten better at canceling them—it's possible that this was the first death Cole has ever seen up close.

Morris gets a grip on Cole's shoulder to stop him from swaying. "That's how Queens operate, from what I hear," he says. "Look, if you've the time to take a trip to the table I can make you some tea. We've been trying to save the chamomile—we're running low—but I can make an exception for circumstances."

"It's all going wrong, isn't it?" Cole mumbles. Between them, the air congeals—the Protocol hisses through his veins, tweaking the beat of his heart as it passes from one side of his chest to the other, and for a moment, they both go still by instinct, waiting for the world to settle again.

Morris hauls him to his feet, checking to make sure he's steady before leading him back to the forest. "Everything's going to be fine," he says firmly. He blinks away the afterimages the Protocol left in his eyes and gives Cole a little shake. They're fine. They're going to be fine.

"First Alice, now this…"

"Queens behead people sometimes," Morris says. "That's _well_ within the Protocol's bounds. Not_ pleasant_, certainly, but then, neither is sugar in green tea and you don't see me telling the guests not to do that to themselves—" His tone is light, though the forced levity leaves a rancid taste on the roof of his mouth. The worst he can expect to face at the Tea Party is the occasional batch of over-steeped tea and flying cutlery; Cole's job holds more potential horror by several leagues.

* * *

He gets Cole to the clearing without incident, and by the time Morris ushers him into the house, Cole's moving under his own power, his movements less mechanical than before. Morris steers him into the couch and ducks into the kitchen to put some water on before returning to his cousin's side, wary of leaving him alone too long.

"I've never been in here before," Cole mutters. "Smaller than I imagined. Haigha and I were never close. He missed my predecessor, I think." He lifts a shaking hand to tug on his cravat and then rifles his fingers through his hair, leaving it sticking up in all directions. "I shouldn't stay long. I'll be missed."

"Have some tea first," Morris says. "You can't go back to the palace like this." Cole bobs his head in agreement, staring at his palms, and Morris rubs between his shoulders. "It's nothing to worry about. It's just the way things are, sometimes. The Queen of Hearts has to shed a little blood now and then. It's just the Protocol." He's aware that this is probably not helping, but what else is he supposed to do? Offer meaningless platitudes that they will both know to be lies?

Nevertheless, he's relieved when the kettle whistles and gives him an excuse to flee for a moment. He sets the water aside and fills a strainer with chamomile and a tiny pinch of spearmint, then drops that into his smallest tea pot and pours the water over it. The soft smell of dried hay wafts up with the steam, and he bites the inside of his cheek, feeling as though his lungs have doubled in weight—chamomile was always Haigha's favorite.

He pushes the thought away and arranges the pot on a tray with two cups. Cole hasn't moved an inch since Morris left him, but he takes the tea that Morris offers with a wan smile. "You're probably right," he mutters, sipping his tea as Morris pours for himself. "It's probably nothing to worry about—all the same…"

Morris nods. He's never seen an execution up close and he's not keen to—he can hardly blame Cole for being upset. For a moment, they drink their tea without speaking. "So—so the Queen's having a child?" Morris asks after a moment.

"Hm? Oh. Yes." Cole shakes himself and drains his tea cup in a quick, jittery movement. "A boy. Jack. The Protocol made that clear, right before—well. You know." He spins his cup between his fingers, frowning. "Maybe not the King's, though, I don't think. He was surprised as anyone."

"Oh." Morris supposes that makes sense—from what little he's seen of the inner workings of the royal court, the Queen treats her husband more like an obedient dog than a human being, and one didn't, after all, go around breeding with one's pets. He wonders a little who would be brave enough to carry on an affair with the Queen of Hearts—getting close to royalty also meant getting closer to the chopping block—but suits did tend to feel differently on the subject of guillotines than the average Wonderlander. Perhaps they'd think the potential benefits were worth the risk.

"I'm going to have to make the official announcement," Cole says. His tone makes it clear this isn't a task he's looking forward to; Morris offers him a sympathetic smile. "That's what the Queen thinks I'm doing now, in fact. And I should really be going—I'm terribly behind schedule—"

"Of course," Morris says.

"I'll be around at the Tea Party today, I think, to get all of yours at once—saves me a trip 'round the forest, at least," Cole adds, half to himself. "Thank you for the tea, Morris. I'm off before my head is." With a final, rather strained grin, he bounds for the door, fumbling to check his watch as he goes. Morris stays put until the door slams shut, feeling a bit nonplussed by Cole's abrupt turnaround. It must, he decides, be a necessary skill in Cole's line of work. White Rabbits who cannot recover from a little bloodshed are certain not to last long.

* * *

Several days after the Queen's future heir is announced, The Dodo comes to the Tea Party. He sits without speaking for some time, motionless save for the movement of his hand as he stirs sugar into his tea, until Monard decides to lift his head from where it was pillowed on a half-eaten shortcake to mutter something about coinage. A brief hush surges through the rest of the guests; Morris clears his throat and offers the nearest one another cup of tea, but it's too late. They are all already taking sneaky glances between the Hatter, who seems oblivious of the sudden crackling silence, and the Dodo, whose eyes have narrowed into slits.

"Now, now, March Hare," he says, his gaze not wavering from Monard as he speaks. "There's no need for such transparent measures to keep the peace. We are, after all, friends here, united in our belief in certain… freedoms, even under her majesty's reign." For a moment, Morris holds his breath and hopes that the excitementof the past few days is just making him jumpy and that threads of rebellion the Dodo trails in his wake will stay safely out of the Tea Party, but then the Dodo adds, in an offhand tone that is an obvious challenge, "Isn't that so, Gideon?"

The Hatter's eyes are invisible in the shadow of his hat's brim, but Morris imagines he sees them glimmer all the same. "We are free, of course," he says, "within the bounds of good sense." A young tortoise—Morris thinks nir name is Dex, though ne hasn't come by often enough for him to be sure—a few seats to the Hatter's left begins to speak, and the Hatter bounces a spoon off nir forehead with unerring aim and ne shrinks back. "We are not free, for example, to run amok upsetting the natural balance of things, and the Queen's hand is a firm one, that's true, but no one begrudges the helmsman for keeping a strong grip in a hurricane, do they?"

The Hatter sits back, seeming pleased by this logic, but Morris can see the slow smile creeping onto the Dodo's face. Morris wants to slam his hand onto the table or break one of the spare saucers—anything to make a loud enough noise to divert the guests' attention before this can escalate any further out of control, and he even begins to move to do so, but his courage fails him. Shouting that this is _his _table and there will be no talk of rebellion under his watch will do nothing but incur the Hatter's wrath, and March Hares must, after all, exhibit self-control.

"A steady hand on the rudder is hardly so commendable when it directs the ship at a dangerous reef," the Dodo says. He sips his tea, his eyes sliding closed in exaggerated pleasure at the taste.

"The Queen is no thoughtless navigator," the Hatter says through gritted teeth. "And she has done a fine job of avoiding _reefs _thus far." The guests, almost to a one, stare either at him or into their tea with varying expressions of nervousness or worry—no doubt they would all side with the Dodo had the Protocol not oozed through their minds for their entire lives, tracing into their skulls glyphs that stand for peace and submission and keeping their heads down and their shoulders hunched to avoid exposing their necks. As it is, they appear frozen in place by their fears. "She works for the betterment of our land. As must we all."

"For her betterment, at least," the Dodo says, with an ingratiating smile. "In any case, there is to be a race tomorrow at ten—if you have to ask where it is, you're not the sort of runner we want." The Hatter glares at him, and the Dodo settles back in his chair, looking smug.

A flash of white overhead pulls Morris's attention away from the table for an instant. He looks up and sees the Cheshire Cat perched high in the branches of the tree, his tail swishing back and forth through the air. When his eyes meet Morris's, he winks and begins to fade. At a low growl from the direction of the Hatter, Morris drags his gaze back to the level of the table; he refills a few empty cups without paying much attention to what type of tea they used to be—everyone can just make do with earl grey for the remainder of the party, he supposes.

"If you can't be civil," the Hatter says through gritted teeth, "then get out. And stay gone!" He shakes a butter knife in the Dodo's general direction, which has no effect other than to make the Dodo chuckle and reach for another scone.

* * *

The end of the party cannot come soon enough. Morris spends the remainder of it flitting back and forth between the Hatter's end of the table and the Dodo's; there is very little talk, and he's sure the rest of the guests are as aware as he is of the painful silence stretching across the table. A nerve in the Hatter's jaw keeps twitching. When the Hatter slams his cup down and snarls that it's time to go home, most of the guests scatter at once. The Dodo picks himself out of his chair more slowly, gives his sleeves a little shake, and strolls off, humming to himself.

"Some party," Monard mutters, awaking with a start and beginning to clear off what remains of the food. He still looks half asleep, so Morris ignores him in favor of gathering up silverware. He glances up at the tree again as he does so; a faint crescent of teeth glitters back at him. "Dodo's going to get himself killed one of these days if he keeps up like that."

In fact the Dodo is more likely to get _other _people killed than himself; his sort are good at evading capture and maneuvering their way out of execution. Morris makes a noncommittal noise of agreement as he begins to fill the sink and Monard descends into his pantry with empty jars tucked under both arms. "Hatter's right to want him away from here," he says after a moment, over the noise of splashing water. "He's putting everyone at risk."

"Guilt by association," Monard agrees with a vague hum. He slams the trapdoor shut with a tomato-red _bang_ that bursts in the center of Morris's vision and leaves an afterimage burned into his retinas for almost four seconds. Morris blinks hard until it's gone. "You want help with that?"

"No," Morris says quickly. "Thank you, but—I can take it from here." He glances up at the tree again as Monard begins to leave; the outline of the Cat is now visible, though faint. A pair of large, black eyes blinks down at him from the area that must be the Cat's face, and he hears a purr so low that, were he not aware of its source, he might have mistaken it for distant thunder. As Monard disappears into the forest, the Cat coalesces. His fur is standing on end, but it falls flat as he leaps to the ground and shrugs his shoulders, straightening up and tipping his hat.

"Hola," he says, with a cheery grin that catches Morris off guard. "Surprised to see me, March Hare?"

"Not particularly," Morris says. The Cat lets out a huff, drops his head back onto his head, and leans back against the tree, folding his arms. "I hope you have good news?"

The Cat clears his throat and shoots a pointed look in the direction of the table; Morris sighs and pours him the last of the day's darjeeling. He doesn't bother to hide his impatience while he waits for the Cat to finish it—it seems to him that the Cat has not quite grasped the severity of the situation, but then, Cheshire folk are not well known for their seriousness. "Xe said," the Cat begins at last, smacking has lips with overdramatic satisfaction as he drains his cup, "That Alice has both arrived, and not arrived, and in the case that she has arrived she's not able to leave." He shrugs.

_That _can't be right—Morris frowns. "Are you quite sure that's what xe s—"

With a great roll of his eyes, the Cat cuts him off. "What xe _actually _said was 'whatever comes down must also go up,'" he says. "If you want a straight answer you'll have to find someone who doesn't have a library in xyr head. Makes xem a little—ennnngh, you know what I mean?" He spins the tip of his tail and grins hugely.

Morris rubs his eyes. "Can you ask for clarification?" he snaps.

The Cat hums. "Lay off the earl grey, March Hare—you're getting jumpy." He wiggles his fingers and vanishes, save for the gleaming crescent of teeth Morris is already beginning to loathe. "I'll see what I can do," he purrs, "but I warn you—too many questions and your brain will be leaking out your ears. Xe has that effect on people."

His teeth disappear, too. A soft rustle of fur sparks in Morris's peripherals, and then silence falls on the clearing once more.


	6. Tea Trade

Tea Trade

On the third day of every month, Morris takes the Tea Party scarab out to the Looking Glass to pick up the month's shipment of tea. The scarab is an old, clunky model, its bronze sides stained with grease and with wings that are prone to tortured groans when they're first engaged. The engine always puts him in mind of a death rattle, but it flies as smooth as anything and its cargo hold has more room than any of the newer contraptions developed by the Diamonds since this one fell into the Tea Party's hands—he's even heard some of the new ones have to hang cargo _outside _the scarab shells, and the thought of doing that to his tea makes him want to scream or, were he able, cry.

He enjoys the flight. Maneuvering the scarab out of its underground hangar is always a bit tricky, but once he's actually in the air, well—Wonderland looks its best from several hundred feet up. The Frangible Forest sprawls across most of the populated region like a bristling amoeba edged by the manufactured green of the distant croquet fields on one side and the grey-blue of the Fitful sea stretching to the horizon on the other, with only a thin strip of white sand to mark the coast. Straight ahead lies the Looking Glass Steppe, pale yellow in the early-morning sun; it cuts off at what, from this distance, appears to be a wall of pure light—though it's really just sunlight reflecting off the massive expanse of the Looking Glass and the mirrored cliffs along which it makes its home.

Finding the Looking Glass itself is normally something of a challenge—it's difficult to pick out from the surrounding cliffs at the best of times, and to make matters worse, it changes its size and location with alarming frequency and has been known to go so far as to hide from people it doesn't like. So far this has not happened to Morris, but he nevertheless has to bring the scarab low and inch his way along the cliff face until he sees misty, flickering images of the land beyond—he throttles the scarab forward at once, not wanting to lose it.

As he approaches, he becomes aware of a low hum emanating from the Looking Glass—something he's noticed before but which never fails to set his teeth on edge. It turns to insubstantial lilac mist as he drives the scarab into it, and the sudden snap of reversal as he swaps places with his reflection makes his stomach flip over. His knuckles whiten on the scarab's yoke; the sensation never lingers for more than a few seconds and soon enough, he breaks through the other side to the air above the House.

He resists the urge to look down. The House, built in ages past in the shadow of the Looking Glass, has a way of making his eyes cross and his head spin whenever he looks at it because there's something just a little bit _off _about how it looks. He's never been able to put to words why the House looks wrong; it isn't so extreme that any particular part can be pin-pointed as the source of the problem but, whatever it is, it makes his eyeballs feel like they're trying to turn inside-out.

* * *

The Tea Company houses its wares in a honeycomb of storerooms underneath the harbor, about halfway up the board. There's a concrete landing platform for the scarab on a low rise above the docks; today, it looks like one large puddle—it must have rained last night. Morris grumbles to himself as he guides the scarab onto the platform, wishing he'd worn better-insulated shoes.

Two company personnel are waiting for him at the edge of the platform. Morris recognizes the shorter of the two as a retired White Player named Arlie; the other, a person with a certain cragginess about their face that puts him in mind of a boulder, grins at him as he steps out of the scarab. "Morning," Arlie shouts—Morris has never heard xem speak _without_ shouting—and then jerks xyr chin up at xyr companion. "Y'don't know Celandine, do you? She's our newest blender."

"Can't say I do," Morris says. Celandine thrusts out a shovel-like hand and, when he takes it, gives his a shake that sends vibrations up to his shoulder.

"I devised the recipe for the new tea," she says, in a voice the exact color of a daffodil. It pops in front of him like a firework. "Coruse."

"You'll be getting some of it today," Arlie adds with a sharp nod. "'s good stuff. Tastes like pears."

Celandine shoots xem a rather exasperated look, which Morris takes to mean that this new blend has a good deal more complexity than just _pears_, and then she turns to grin at Morris again. "I used to work out at the tea farms on Rilchiam," she says. "Thought the mushrooms there might be useful for more than just making mekath blends, so—I did some experimenting in my off hours. Almost killed myself four times before I got it right." There's a definite note of pride in her voice.

"I do wish I had time for a tasting," Morris says. Though he's never been brave enough to try mekath—breathing the steam is enough to make his head pound and triple the saturation of the sounds he hears, so he's not keen to see what happens if he actually _drinks _the stuff—a brand-new blend is an accomplishment worth celebrating. He supposes he'll just have to swap coruse in for the silver needle as today's special tea instead.

Arlie slings an arm around his neck and begins to half-drag him down to the entrance of the Tea Company warehouse. "You Hares worktoo hard, I've always thought." Morris winces—this close to his ear, Arlie's voice might as well be a pick-axe swinging into his skull—and nods along as Celandine falls into step next to him, humming to herself. "_Much _too hard. 'snot good for the heart. You'll wear right it right through, mark my words."

"Leave the poor boy alone, Arlie," Celandine says, sounding amused. She catches Morris's eye and winks. "I'm sure he more than makes up for it with tea, eh?"

"I don't think about it much—" Morris says. Arlie claps him on the shoulder.

"Y'don't think about much of anything, I expect," Arlie says. "You Wonderlanders." Xe shakes xyr head. "You're lucky you have us to take care of the thinking bits, else we'd all be stuck running in circles."

They reach the entrance to the warehouse, and Arlie kicks the door open instead of relinquishing xyr grip on Morris. They step inside, and then into the huge elevator within, across from the door. The operator inside gives them a wink and twists a knob; the elevator doors clang shut, and the whole thing shudders once and begins to descend.

As the elevator jars its way down, Morris catches himself wondering whether Franco managed to find work here, if he's used this elevator before, if he's somewhere in the warehouses below or if he made himself scarce to ensure there was no chance their paths would cross today. His stomach turns into a cold, hard fist, and he swallows the urge to ask Arlie whether xe's heard anything of his former friend—Franco wanted to be left alone, and respecting that is the least Morris can do after… everything.

"You'll have to come out to the party sometime," Morris says to Celandine instead. "For the tea. We'll do something to commemorate…"

"I'd like that," she says. "I've heard many things about the Tea Party, but I've never been myself. I confess I'm curious."

The elevator groans. Morris squints though the brassy miasma of the sound to watch as the dial indicating which floor they are on drops by the minute: _-1… -2.7… -3… -5b… Md… A1… A2… -13_…

Their descent stops with a muffled thump on floor Q9, where the tea is put in crates and stored in bulk for transport. The operator ushers them out of the elevator and they emerge into a sea of whistles and low pops—the language of the toves employed by the company for manual labor. Morris's order is already waiting on an arrangement of pallets near the elevator, guarded by a pair of toves. Their silver pelts gleam even in the dim light.

"Right," Arlie says as they approach the crates. Xe ticks off on xyr fingers as xe rattles off Morris's order. "Crate of chamomile, crate of this month's specialty artisan—volcano flower burst, two earl grey, one each of assorted black and green blends; one assorted white, one of darjeeling, one of oolong; assorted fruit, assorted herbal, and three complimentary tins of coruse with an option to have a crate delivered to the party if you like it."

Morris gives the crates a once-over before he says, "This all seems to be in order." Arlie signs out an order to the toves, who whistle in confirmation and attack the stacks of crates with two enormous pallet jacks; Morris, Arlie, and Celandine retreat to give them the space they need.

"Now, I hate to be a bother," Arlie begins, lowering xyr voice to a normal volume for once. Celandine begins to look very uncomfortable; she clears her throat and shuffles a short distance away, her arms folded. "But there've been certain rumors concerning, ah—Madame Sheep's been in a mood since she got wind of certain goings on in Wonderland—"

"The Queen's tariffs, yes," Morris says.

"I'm just the messenger, y'understand," Arlie says quickly. "Only, Madame Sheep's been putting it out that if this tariff business goes through—gold's not worth tea, so…" Xe hops from one foot to the other and then back again. "Rumor is she's been saying that if it happens, the party can get its teas elsewhere. We're a respectable business here."

"I'm well aware of that," Morris says.

"Madame Sheep won't do business with thieves who don't pay like for like, is what I'm saying," Arlie says.

Morris shoots xem the most severe look he can muster, and Arlie tucks xyr shoulders up like a turtle huddling into its own shell. "I have no intention of allowing the Queen's plans to interfere with the flow of tea," Morris says. "You spread that around, all right? Even if she gets her economy, the table stays free."

He'll figure out some way to deal with the tariffs without the Queen's noticing—she almost never comes out to the party anyway, and he's sure the regular guests won't be opposed to pitching in when necessary to make sure that everything at least _looks_ like it's running the way her majesty wants it to. It is, perhaps, not ideal, but one does what one must, and no doubt the Protocol will do what it can, too.

"Glad to hear that," Arlie says. "Be a shame to stop doing business with you, you ask me." The toves finish what they're doing as xe speaks and begin to wheel the tea toward the elevator; xe and Morris follow in their wake, and Celandine joins them a moment later.

By the time they arrive at the surface again, the toves have already packed most of the crates into the scarab. While they wait for the final crate to be moved, Morris makes arrangements with Celandine for her to visit the Tea Party next week, for the first official tasting of coruse Wonderland-side. The date made, she takes her leave, and as the toves finish strapping everything into the scarab, Morris slips Arlie a receipt for a dozen models of the Diamonds' newest selective tea harvester—the exchange for this month's teas.

Arlie tucks the receipt into xyr jacket with a wink. "Pleasure doing business with you, Hare," xe says.

"The feeling's mutual," Morris says. The tove closest to them gives a shrill whistle to signal that their work is done and his new cargo is flight-ready and then, with a flash of silvery hair, they whirl back toward the warehouse. Arlie gives Morris a nod and follows after them at a more reasonable pace.

His foot is on the first of the rungs leading to the scarab's cockpit when he hears someone shouting his name and looks around—it's a scrawny-looking page in the standard uniform of the Red Players. "…Can I help you?" he asks, as the page staggers to a halt in front of him. They slump against the scarab, wheezing, and Morris waits for them to catch their breath.

"Old Thackery sent me," they say as soon as they can. Morris blinks in surprise; Thackery manages—or maybe is managed _by_—the Looking Glass House, and for all that he's a cousin the same as any Leporidae, he's so much of a recluse that he doesn't _feel _much like family. Then the page wrinkles their nose, and they add, "_Well_, indirectly, he sent me, anyway—actually it was Percy who told me and _she _heard it from—only that's not _really _important—but, you see—"

"Can you tell me what _is _important?" Morris says. In his experience, Glasslanders and _especially_ Players will go on qualifying themselves for minutes on end if left unchecked. It's a symptom of the game, he thinks.

"Old Thackery says there's trouble in Wonderland and no one goes through the Glass for now," the page says promptly. "He's locked it down."

"…Trouble?"

They shrug. "Park it in the gardens and ask him. He just said to warn you ahead of time so you didn't go trying to break the blockade." They fix him with a very severe look, which looks odd on a face that can't be more than twelve and which he's certain they learned from their Queen, and then they give a hasty salute and dash off again. Morris watches them retreat for a moment, a little nonplussed.

Trouble in Wonderland—and he'd bet the entirety of the tea now in his possession that whatever it is, it pivots on the actions of the Caucus. The thought sends a shudder down his spine, and he hauls himself up into the scarab's cockpit at once. He can only hope that this _trouble _takes the form of peaceful protest or civil debate, at least as much as can be allowed under the Queen's reign, but he doubts very much that that's the case.

* * *

He makes straight for the House, screwing his eyes up against the distortion of space as he steers the scarab onto an open stretch of sand at the outskirts of the flower gardens. Once he's past the fence that separates the garden from the rest of the board, he closes his eyes and begins to walk away from the back door, hands out-stretched to keep his balance and, he hopes, prevent him from colliding with anything, until his fingertips touch the cool wood of the siding. He opens his eyes and finds himself a few inches away from the door; he leans over and knocks, and within a matter of seconds, the door swings wide to reveal Thackery, listing to one side and drowning in a sky-blue dressing gown.

"Oh," Thackery says. His voice is the color of the gown, though more ragged and threadbare along the edges. "You. Hallo."

He doesn't make room for Morris to enter, something for which Morris is grateful—proximity to the House is already driving spikes into his skull—but Thackery's nose twitches a time or two, like he's scenting for eavesdroppers. "What's going on Wonderland-side?" Morris asks after a moment, during which Thackery continues to sniff and makes no sign that he's planning to speak soon.

"Fighting in the Caucus," Thackery says with an exaggerated shrug. "The Aces of Hearts were sent out half an hour ago, if my sources are to be believed. There will, I'm sure, be executions tonight." He offers Morris a glassy smile while a vein on his forehead throbs. "I'll let you through the Glass when the fighting's died down—wouldn't want a cousin to get caught in the crossfires. Come. I'll make you some tea for the wait."

They set up a rickety little table in the gardens, and Morris has a momentary crisis when Protocol-reinforced habits of being the one with the teapot clash violently with the fact that tea pours in weird directions here, and both he and Thackery know that if Morris tried to pour for them he'd just end up with tea everywhere but the cups. He lets Thackery handle the teapot, though his fingers still itch for the feel of the porcelain handle and his chest feels tight until the cups are filled and the pot is safe on the table between them—it feels _wrong_ not to be the server.

"I trust you'll have your hands full when you return," Thackery says. He shovels several spoonfuls of sugar into his tea and stirs with such vigor that Morris is almost surprised the cup doesn't shatter, then drains the whole thing in a single gulp that _must_ have been too hot to taste anyway. Morris offers a non-committal shrug.

"What exactly happened?"

"A race gone bad," Thackery says. "I'm told they placed the ring at the very border of the croquet fields. A few pigeons overstepped onto the Queen's grass, and when they were detained by the suits, well…" He spreads his hands in a _what-can-you-do? _gesture and reaches for the teapot again. Morris looks away quickly; a knot of tiger-lilies lets out a shriek of giggles, and the boldest of them flutters their petals in his direction. "I can't say I'm surprised. Things have been getting very nasty, haven't they?"

"Mm."

"That Dodo. I knew he was trouble the moment he took over, all that pretty talk about social duty. Utter nonsense." His nose twitches in irritation. "Surprised the Protocol didn't take care of it, though I suppose there is something to be said for leaving an example every now and then."

"Dead people aren't examples," Morris says. "They're just dead."

Thackery gives him a look of deepest pity and gulps his tea.


	7. The Guillotine Drops

The Guillotine Drops

It is nearly sundown when a scrawny Pika sidles through the Looking Glass to inform them that the fighting is done, and that those who were arrested are scheduled to be executed publicly in an hour. Thackery dismisses them with a wave, but Morris leaps to his feet—relieved at the opportunity to escape the warped space of the House and of Thackery's company—and says, "Let me give you a lift back."

The Pika looks surprised by this, but accepts with a faint tremor in their voice, following a little behind Morris as they return to the scarab. Morris keeps them in his peripherals; they have an aura of nervous energy about them, so much so that he half expects them to change their mind and make a break for the Looking Glass, but they clamber up into the scarab after him without comment and strap themself in in equal silence as he coaxes the scarab's engine to life.

"What's your name?" he asks. The Pika hunches their shoulders and doesn't answer until after the scarab's in the air and halfway through the Looking Glass.

"Clare," they say. "You can just let me out at the edge of the forest."

He wants to ask where they came from, if there's somewhere closer to where they need to go because he doesn't mind going out of his way, but Clare is sitting ramrod-straight with a death grip on the edge of their seat, and he decides not to push it. "I'll do that," he says.

Clare says nothing more, and Morris keeps his mouth shut, too, sneaking glances at them from the corner of his eye now and then; they never relax, never stop staring straight ahead, and Morris feels burning guilt take root in his stomach. He doesn't think he's ever actually _spoken_ to a Pika before, and somehow that had never occurred to him until just now. Of course, he'd never had the opportunity to—Pikas are a rarity within the Leporidae complex, even more so than Jackrabbits, so it wasn't as if he'd isolated himself from them by choice, but at the same time—he'd found ways to spend time with Franco, hadn't he?

He brings the scarab down at the outskirts of the forest, and it's only just touched down when Clare unbuckles themself from the seat and moves stiffly to the exit. "Clare—" he says. He feels as though he ought to apologize, though he can't articulate even to himself _why_, or how he would do so, or what he would even apologize for specifically; Clare looks back at him with their eyebrows raised, so he has to say _something_. "—You're, um, you're welcome at the Tea Party. If you ever want to—"

Clare blinks at him, slowly. "My family has always been _welcome_ at the Tea Party," they say. "Do you really think you're the first to offer us an invitation? That's your job, isn't it? Everyone's welcome at the Tea Party." They scramble out of the scarab, peering for a second at him through the hatch. "Only we're not, and nothing you say so you can forgive yourself for it will change that."

They let go of the ladder; Morris hears a muffled thump as they hit the ground, and a moment later, he sees them through the windscreen, running flat-out back toward the Looking Glass Steppe. He watches them go, thinking he _should_ have just stuck with apologizing, because maybe that wouldn't have left this sickening, tight feeling in his gut.

* * *

Clare is still in his mind when Morris brings the scarab into its hanger perhaps ten minutes later. He _didn't _make that offer for himself—did he?—and they really are welcome—or at least _he _wouldn't make a fuss if a Pika showed up at the party. He realizes, with a sinking feeling in his chest, that he's not sure he can say the same for anyone else. Pikas aren't exactly common in the forest; though they're often seen around the Pool of Tears, he's never seen one venture past the edge of the trees. It never occurred to him to wonder why, or to think it was for any reason other than a preference for invisibility, but now…

He scowls, unsure whether his ire is directed at himself for his uncertainty or at Clare for bringing it to his attention in the first place. Both, he expects, although it seems unfair to blame Clare for his own—shortcomings or lack of education, or—whatever this is. For a moment after the scarab's engine whines to a halt, he sits in the pilot seat, staring into the gloom outside the windscreen.

Then he gives himself a shake, because regardless of his personal conflicts, he does have a job to do. He climbs down to wrestle open the huge door that covers the cargo hold, grumbling under his breath as he does so. It gives at last with a tortured creak, and he flops against the side of the scarab, panting in triumph. Now there is only the matter of dragging the eleven crates out one by one and hauling them into the temperature-controlled tea storage room until he's ready to use them—no small feat, given that he's on his own for the task.

He starts the process of unbuckling the numerous straps that kept them in place for the duration of the flight; he is about halfway done when the Dodo's voice blooms out of the darkness behind him. He's so startled he doesn't catch the words, but when he whirls around, the Dodo is right there, lantern in hand. "What are you doing here?" Morris demands. "This is Tea Party property—it's _private_."

"Monard let me in."

"Why?"

The Dodo rolls his eyes. "Because he's a friend of the people, March Hare. The real question is—are _you_?"

His first instinct is to say yes, of course he is, but then he thinks of what Clare said to him only moments ago and the way they ran like they were afraid of retribution for it, and he swallows his pride. "What do you want?"

"Your help," the Dodo says at once. "I know you're the reason the Queen has not yet implemented her tariffs. Your allegiance is to the Tea Party, not to the Hatter—that's important. You're in a position to do a great deal of good, if you're willing to take the risk."

Morris does not, and never has, liked the sound of _risk_, a habit of precaution pressed into him by Mother and set in stone by the Protocol. Under normal circumstances, he might turn the Dodo away now, but—he shivers. The Dodo isn't one to gamble if he doesn't stand a good chance of winning, everyone knows that, and perhaps the race today was more calculated than Thackery made it sound. And in any case, what's the harm in hearing him out? "Go on," he mutters.

"The suits did not manage to detain as many as they would like. The Queen will not be satisfied with a mere eight executions, not when there were fifty-six of us at the race this afternoon. Those who got away would be… significantly safer outside of Wonderland." The Dodo glances rather pointedly at the scarab, and Morris sighs.

"You want me to get them to Looking Glass Land," he says. The Dodo beams, which is the only confirmation that Morris really needs. "It'll take time, you know. I only go once a month; changing that would risk raising suspicion. And I doubt forty-eight people can fit comfortably and safely into the cargo—"

The Dodo cuts him off with a wave of his free hand. "We need time to work out the details with our contacts on the board," he says. "The refugees are housed safely for the time being. By next month, they will be ready to move—arrangements will be made. Provided you are willing to help."

What choice does he have, really? The Tea Party scarab is never stopped or searched, because the Hatter flaunts his loyalty to the Queen and it is assumed that his influence prevents any outright dissent within the rest of the party. He has enough faith in the Dodo's abilities to be… covert in getting refugees into the scarab itself, and once he's in the air, they'll all be safe until they get through the Looking Glass, after which it won't matter anymore because they'll be gone. There is risk, certainly, but not enough to justify condemning almost fifty people to death by saying no. "I'll do it," he says. Something in his midriff flutters unpleasantly.

The Dodo smiles and says nothing more; they work together in silence to pull the crates out of the scarab and put them in order in storage, Morris chewing the inside of his cheek the entire time. As soon as everything is arranged to his satisfaction, Morris bids the Dodo goodbye. Without even pausing to catch his breath, he sets out for the Heart Palace at top speed.

He arrives just in time to see the first head fall: some kind of hawk, it looks like, the tawny, feathered head stained crimson as it drops from its owner's neck and into a crate. The assembled courtiers give a strained cheer that stretches overhead like a sickly green spider web. The Queen smiles; the King closes his eyes. There's a sallow cast to his skin today, and even from the back of the crowd, Morris can see beads of sweat glittering on his forehead. He focuses on that to keep from looking at the blood seeping down from the guillotine's blade.

The hawk's body is cleared away by a pair of Spades, their faces hidden behind featureless masks, and another pair drags out the next victim—Morris feels his stomach lurch. It's a mouse, so young they're barely big enough to fit in the guillotine. He's not close enough to see their face, though that's a small comfort; his imagination fills in the details he might otherwise be spared from by distance.

Cole steps out from the shadows behind the Queen's throne, scroll in hand, to stutter out a recitation of crimes. "Natalie Murinae. Y-you are sentenced to death for multiple counts of trespassing, disturbing the peace, ah, attempted murder—" Morris winces, as do many of those around him. "Attempted murder" means that Natalie had tried to defend themself when the suits arrested them, nothing more, and everyone knows that. The Queen's smile grows sharper by several degrees. "—attempted murder, yes, and d-disrespect to Her Majesty the Queen."

He swallows hard and cringes back into the shadows. The guillotine blade hisses when it falls; Morris closes his eyes, but it doesn't save him from the wet _thunk _nor the subsequent thud of Natalie's head landing in the crate. The cheers sound more like screaming this time. Even through closed eyelids, the green bleeds through the darkness and burns itself into his retinas.

It goes on like that. After each death, the crowd vibrates and every time he expects something to break, because he feels like a thread stretched taut and everyone else must too, but fear and the Protocol keep them all frozen. Executions are supposed to wipe all trace of the victims from memory, but he keeps count of the victims in the privacy of his head—the hawk, Natalie, twin magpies named Rye and Bartleby, Liam the crow and Trisha the raven, a decrepit owl whose name Cole never offered, a rat called Rosa. They'll have no official wake, no ceremony to mark their premature passing, but later tonight, Morris will light a candle for each of them—it's the least he can do.

When it's over, and Rosa's body has been cleared away, and the crateful of heads has been nailed shut and set alight so the stench of burning flesh fills the air, the Queen gets to her feet. For a moment, it is silent save for the crackle of the fire, and then she says, "Let this be a reminder. I have been merciful, these past years—too merciful, it seems. That is not a mistake I shall make again. Now get out."

Morris is one of the first to leave, having arrived late; as he hurries out the palace gates, he sees a group of unmarked suits—the Aces of Hearts, he suspects, though of course that is only a suspicion—propping the headless bodies of the dead up on posts around the gate. His stomach rolls. As soon as he's outside the pool of light at the gates, he runs.

* * *

He doesn't stop until he hits the side of his house. For a moment, he presses his forehead to the cold, rough walls, and then the adrenaline starts to fade and he realizes his legs are quivering; he slides down to sit on the stoop, his back against the door, panting. He drags his hands down his face, digs his palms into his eyes trying to rid himself of the images of severed heads and bloodied, headless scarecrows and the forced cheers of the court hanging over everything like a net waiting to drop, but the darkness behind his eyelids only makes it worse.

His eyes begin to water. He squeezes them shut and scrubs at them with his thumbs until they stop—he's quick enough to put a stop to the tears before the Protocol can do more than give him a warning squeeze, but all the same he hauls himself to his feet and hurries inside. No point in leaving it to chance when he could busy himself with important things.

First, there is the matter of candles; he digs up eight of them, most of them little more than stumps and one that he finds under the couch that, from the look of it, has never even been burned. He arranges them carefully so that, when he lights them, all eight flames are reflected in his little shaving mirror.

He sits on the counter to watch them, wondering as he does so if the families of the dead are doing the same thing right now, or if they're unable to for fear of being killed themselves. Morris was eleven the last time there were any mass executions, well on his way to adulthood by popular thought but still very much a child in Mother's eyes, and he'd been sheltered from the worst of the news accordingly. Still, he knew the stories about mourning family members getting arrested for aiding and abetting the rebellion, and the Queen made her wrath more than clear today.

It occurs to him that he's putting himself into potential risk, if that's the case, by performing this ritual, but—it wouldn't feel right to leave it to chance or to the bravery of their families, or even the existence of family close enough to take the risk. The souls of the dead might remain trapped in Wonderland otherwise, and he's at least under protection by association with the Hatter. At least this way he can know for sure that they've made it out.

The last candle burns down just as the sky is beginning to lighten.


	8. The Pika at the Party

The Pika at the Party

Cole brings him a sample of the new coins when they meet a few days later. It's later than their usual time, late enough that the sun has risen and the morning fog is beginning to thin, when Cole lopes up plops a velvet drawstring pouch on the rock between them.

"What's this?"

"Open it," Cole says, grim-faced. "That's part of the first batch—ten of three hundred." Morris loosens the mouth of the bag enough to pull out a pair of coins—they're about as big around as the first knuckle of his thumb, and less misshapen than he would have expected for something made out of gold. It gleams scarlet when he tilts it to the sunlight. "The Queen did something to them so they won't bend—to stop forgeries, I guess."

Morris puts it back in its pouch—the clink it makes when it rejoins its fellows reminds him of the sound of teeth clacking together, sharp and unwelcoming. "What're we meant to do with them, exactly?"

"She's going to roll out smaller coins over the next few weeks," Cole says, his nose wrinkling. "Assign values to things, execute anyone who argues, I expect. Um."

It's been a while since he's seen his cousin look so anxious outside the confines of the Heart Palace, but now, abruptly, Morris gets the impression that Cole is but a loud noise away from dashing away to the nearest burrow. He's all but trembling.

"What?"

"…This is for you, too," Cole mumbles, pulling a thin scroll out of his sleeve. He holds it out, his eyes fixed on a point several inches to the right and about level with Morris's elbow. Morris unrolls it at once; it takes him a moment to parse what he's seeing—the lettering is weird, distorted by ostentatious little flourishes that make everything sort of smear together—but the more he deciphers, the more he wants to vomit.

He knew it was coming, of course, in a theoretical sort of way; the Queen wanted to impose a charge on Tea Company imports and that meant forcing his guests to pay for their tea—but it's one thing to know that and quite another to see it laid out so bluntly like this. He's not sure how much a maravedi is supposed to be worth, but paying four of them in exchange for a day's worth of tea seems beyond exorbitant to him. And this business about taxes at the bottom of the scroll, in even smaller, more impossible print than the rest—the Queen expects him to hand off a third of what he "earns" from extorting his guests. His past optimism regarding the ease with which he'd be able to sidestep the Queen's demands while giving the appearance of lawfulness dim all at once.

"She can't be serious."

"She is," Cole says glumly. "She's been in a mood since the Caucus—well, you know—she had all the Diamond faces executed in secret and now there's a royal mint where one of the scarab hangars used to be. And the King's gone—she locked him up when he tried to intercede, though I'll be damned if I can figure out where she's keeping him now."

Cole tells him that the suits will be delivering batches of coins to everyone in Wonderland over the course of the next month; values will be posted throughout the land, and by the month's end, everyone will have enough money to live on for a fortnight, after which those who are better at grasping the technicalities of the Queen's economy will still be able to feed themselves and those who've run out of money will be reduced to begging. Given that food is supposed to cost a good deal less than tea, on average, Morris supposes that the Queen expects the Tea Party to become something of a luxury. He scowls.

"It's barbaric, I know," Cole mumbles. "By year's end she expects everything to be stable, but…" He spreads his hands in a _what-can-you-do?_ expression, looking even more glum than usual. "We Rabbits are stockpiling now, in case the Queen has some trick for monitoring whether the coins are actually getting used. If we own things beforehand, we don't need to pay for them."

Morris nods. He's heard rumors of similar things happening within the Hare side of things, though he's been remiss in keeping up with his family of late, what with the Tea Party and the Caucus mess taking up most of his time.

"I should be going," Cole says. "The Duchess of Clubs withdrew her cook from the palace in protest of all this—she and the Duchess of Diamonds were good friends—and the Queen's threatening to have _her_ beheaded, too, if she doesn't recant." He shudders visibly and brushes some nonexistent dust off of his sleeves. "You keep your head down, Morris. This is no time to be calling attention to yourself."

"I won't if you don't," Morris tells him, but it's too late; Cole has already turned on his heel to dash off to the forest. Morris trails after him at a walk after slipping the little pouch of coins into his pocket. It jingles irritatingly until he closes a fist around it.

It's not so bad, he thinks. Yes, the high cost of tea makes his blood boil just _thinking_ about it, and if the Tea Party's going to be expected to pay taxes to the Queen, he's not going to be able to keep the party secretly free as he had hoped. On the other hand—his guests are a generous lot, for the most part, and he's sure they can work out some kind of pay-what-you-can system to prevent tea from becoming a luxury restricted to those who can afford it.

The timing is inconvenient; it means he'll be transporting Caucus fugitives to Looking Glass Land mere days before the whole new system is implemented, and Wonderland will no doubt be in a state of high alert when that happens. He considers getting word to the Dodo to request that they delay their plans, to make sure that things have calmed down before he tries to smuggle almost fifty wanted criminals through the Looking Glass, but on the other hand, he's not sure it's a good idea to have Caucus protesters still in Wonderland when the change _really _hits. It might well just erupt into further violence.

He has come to no solid conclusions by the time for the afternoon's party; the presence of the new coins in his pocket is a persistent annoyance, and he finds himself wondering more and more why the Protocol would allow something like this to happen—money in general he could understand, but restricting tea? That's the sort of thing the Protocol was implemented to _stop_.

He fills his pots for the party a little early, so by the time Monard shows up, the tea is all prepared and the infusers have been cleaned and set aside for the day. He helps lay out the food as usual, but his heart isn't in it—every time he moves, his pocket jingles and he starts at the beginning again, wondering _how_ he's going to be able to pull this off without ending up with his head on the chopping block. If Monard notices his distraction, he says nothing about it. Once they finish, he flops into a chair and pours himself a cup of green tea instead of falling asleep.

"The Hatter's in a mood," he says after a moment.

"Oh?"

"Mm." Monard takes a slow drink, blinking lethargically at Morris. "I heard him screaming at someone in his workshop on the way here. Something about bonnets, I think."

"Wonderful," Morris mutters, scowling. The last thing he needs _today _of all days is for the Hatter to start acting irrational—more irrational than usual, anyway—but Monard lets out a sigh as his chin sinks onto his chest. A few seconds later, he begins to snore, and Morris finds he doesn't care enough to try waking him up again. He pours a cup for himself and waits for the first guests to arrive.

* * *

The Tea Party is an unusually rowdy one today. News of the Queen's actions concerning the Diamond family has trickled through the forest as a whole, and Morris, for once, is the center of attention. Everyone wants to know what will become of the Tea Party with the advent of currency; every time he's asked, Morris mumbles that he's sure they'll be able to work something out, not daring to say anything more explicit than that for fear of provoking the Hatter's wrath.

"We'll follow her majesty's guidelines, of course," the Hatter shouts after about the fifth time a guest asks. "They're for the benefit of all, and I'll have no more talk of insurrection at _my_ table."

"They're for the benefit of the _Queen_," Morris mumbles under his breath. The Hatter doesn't hear him, of course, and the party proceeds for a few moments in sullen silence until Cole, who's seated to the Hatter's right and has kept resolutely quiet for the duration of the discussion, clears his throat and proposes a dance. A couple of starlings get up and begin to sing, stumbling a little at first until they get caught up in their own inertia, and Morris can tell everyone's just going through the motions because even as they get up to dance, guests keep throwing worried glances that way and under the Hatter's watchful eye there's nothing he can do but keep refilling cups.

The instant Clare sets foot in the clearing, several dancers goes still and though the starlings keeps singing, their notes falter and lose saturation. Morris looks around and sees Clare themself standing, arms folded, at the edge of the trees. They're dressed head to toe in stormy grey that matches the color of their skin, and the overall effect is that of a stone statue glaring at the table.

Someone starts to say _no room_, but Morris scoops up the nearest piece of silverware and throws it at them without looking. "There's room," he says. He's aware of Cole staring at him like he's started screaming his adoration for the Queen and her money, and his whole head feels like it's on fire, and the Hatter is glaring daggers at him and for some reason Clare is too, but he pulls out a chair anyway. Clare stomps over to it and sits down with such force that the chair rattles; Morris clears his throat and bares his teeth down the length of the table—the starlings pick up where they left off and the dancers stutter back into motion—before glancing back down at Clare. "Tea?"

"I've never had any before," Clare says. "But sure. I'll try."

Morris snags the willow pot as it passes by and pours. "This is earl grey," he says. "It's a bit of a staple—the first Tea Party didn't drink anything else. If it doesn't suit you, try putting milk in it, or else a green instead." He hesitates as Clare takes a tentative sip and promptly wrinkles their nose before reaching for the milk. "I, uh, wasn't expecting you to show up, after…"

"I wasn't expecting you to actually let me stay," Clare says with a shrug. "You Hares are complete bastards."

He winces. "I'm not—" he begins, but Clare fixes him with a stern look and the protest dies in his throat. "Maybe I am. But—I can try to get better, can't I?"

"You tell me," Clare says. They fold their arms. Further down the table, Dex extends from nir shell to ask if ne can _please_ have some more earl grey now, as ne's been waiting almost _two whole minutes_, and Morris hurries over to top off nir cup, glancing guiltily over his shoulder at Clare, who, now that the attention of the party has drifted away, has stopped glaring at the world in general in favor of quietly examining the fine china cup in front of them.

"I'd like a word, Hare," the Hatter says, shoving away from the table abruptly. His cup clatters onto the table, and Cole scrambles out of the way as hot oolong threatens to spill into his lap. Morris sets the willow pot down with care and follows the Hatter to the edge of the clearing.

They've never spoken much, he and the Hatter; their spheres of responsibility do not overlap outside of the Tea Party, and during parties Morris is more focused on the guests than on the man who claims to run the table. The Hatter is a good deal shorter than Morris is, and under different circumstances his attempt to loom might be comical.

"Yes?" Morris says, adopting his obsequious talking-to-the-Queen voice just in case. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Clare watching them intently.

"Friend of yours?" the Hatter asks. He jerks his chin toward Clare.

"No," Morris says. "Does it matter? _Everyone_ is welcome at the Tea Party."

"Well, _yes_, of course." The Hatter lets out an irritable huff and folds his arms. "_Everyone_ is welcome, but that's no reason to go about encouraging just anyone to come. We're a respectable organization, Hare—"

He grits his teeth. "Morris."

"What?"

"My name. Is Morris." Convincing the Hatter to use his _actual_ title would be preferable, of course, but Morris doubts that that is possible.

The Hatter scowls at him. "That isn't the _point_. The _point_ is that the Tea Party has a duty to present—present a certain degree of respectability to the public. We are, after all, the Queen's most loyal—barring the suits, naturally—we are the public face of the royal families and we have to _appear_ as such in order to fulfill the duties inherent in that position. And _you_ have not been holding up your end of things in this regard particularly well since your appointment, I might add."

"We're not going to turn them away," Morris says. "That would defeat the point of everyone being welcome."

"Well, _yes_, but you must make absolutely certain they don't try to come _back_," the Hatter mutters, leaning close enough to encase Morris in a cloud of rancid breath barely tempered by the oolong. "Otherwise all sorts of people might get the wrong idea and go around thinking they can come along and—"

"_Everyone_ is welcome at the Tea Party," Morris says, baring his teeth.

"Now see here—" the Hatter begins, but Morris turns on his heel and stomps back to the table, scoops up the first pot he passes—a second glance reveals that it's the Yixing—and fills himself a cup.

He keeps an eye on Clare for the remainder of the party; they stay put stubbornly throughout three seat changes, nursing the same cup of earl grey all the while. The other guests give them wide berth, and Clare seems oblivious to the Hatter's scowl, so the party ends without further incident. The Hatter storms away the second his clock chimes the hour, and Morris wastes no time in shooing the guests away ("_You_ can stay, if you want," he mutters to Clare, glowering in the direction of the Hatter's departure). Monard wakes up with a stilted hiccoughing noise and leans across the table to offer Clare a sample of the remaining pineapple tarts while Morris begins to clear away the dishes.

"The Hatter didn't want me here," Clare says after a moment.

Monard clicks his tongue. "The Hatter thinks we ought to go back to how it was in the old days," he says. "Just him, me, the Hare, playing musical chairs with this great big empty table and waiting for Alice to come along so we can chase her away again." His yawn gets twisted up with the water filling the sink, a weird blend of strawberry-pink and turquoise bubbles. "He's what you'd call a, a literary traditionalist."

"Or just an elitist," Morris mutters as he drapes his coat over a low branch and prepares to attack the first stack of dirty dishes. Neither Clare nor Monard give any indication that they've heard him.

"What about you?" Clare asks.

"I can sleep through anyone," Monard says. "And it's good food either way." There's a dark russet scraping noise; Morris glances over his shoulder to see Monard dragging an empty platter off of the table and then toward his pantry. "You planning to stick around?"

"Well. Like you said. The food's good. And the tea."

"You should," Monard says, his voice muffled somewhat by the depth of the pantry. "Might give the Hatter an apoplexy, of course—"

"—and what a shame that would be—" Morris says. This time, Clare hears his interjection and snorts.

"What's this tea in the clay pot?"

"The Yixing? That's oolong. Try some, if you want. It's earthier than the earl grey, and more insidious. Don't put milk in it, though."

"Insidious?"

"You know. Softer. Like a sigh instead of a sob." Clare scoffs derisively at that, and Morris tucks his chin closer to his chest, the back of his neck warming to an intolerable level even after he hears the tea being poured. Monard emerges from the pantry with a yawn; Morris picks at a stubborn spot on a spoon with his fingernail. A soft breeze picks up, rattling the branches overhead, and Monard grumbles under his breath about a storm coming in overnight as he descends into the pantry with an armful of jam jars.

"I think I will come back," Clare says, in a guarded tone. Morris sneaks a glance at them; they're leaning back in their chair, high-heeled and steel-tipped boots resting on the table, leaving muddy marks on the cloth. They offer Morris a defiant glower when they catch him looking. "I like this kind better. The oolong."

Morris just nods and turns back to the dishes. "Try to time it so you arrive before the Hatter," he says after a moment. Dishes clink behind him. "He'll claim there's no room if he's here when you show up, but if you're already here, he can't drive you off without making a scene. And a scene's the last thing he wants—it might upset the Queen."

Clare snorts. "Croquet devotee, is he?"

"You could say that," Monard says. "He's usually about fifteen minutes late, so as long as you're on time…"

Clare mutters that it's a poor sort of Hatter who shows up late to his own parties, and Morris begins to tune both of them out as Monard replies that he's useful to have around, even if he does rather fall down on the host part of the job. The dishes are nearly done; all that remains is to dry the last batch and then stow them away in the cabinets until tomorrow and then rinse out the final tea pot. A quick glance over his shoulder reveals that Monard has cleared the table of leftovers; there's no reason for any of them to remain in the clearing much longer. He begins to transfer stacks of saucers into the cabinets, each movement slow and deliberate.

"I should be going," Monard says. "Lots of things to do…"

He wanders away. The back of Morris's neck begins to heat up the moment he's left alone with Clare; what in Dodgson's name is he supposed to say? It turns out not to matter, though, because Monard's tail has scarcely whipped out of sight between the trees when Clare gets to their feet and hands Morris their emptied cup before leaving without a word.

The clearing is dimmer without the sounds of conversation; Morris hurries to finish the job of cleaning up so he can barricade himself in his house, where it will still be quiet but the quality of the silence will feel less like an assault, contained as it is by walls designed to muffle sound.


	9. The Dormouse Enters the Dance

The Dormouse Enters the Dance

When the first guest arrives at the next party, the Hatter tears off his hat and shoves it under eir nose. The guest, an iguana named Ike who comes to every other party without fail and looks forever on the edge of dozing off, studies the hat for a long moment before blinking once. Then ey frowns. Ey's well over a foot taller than the Hatter, eir scaly head crowned with a plume of poisonously green spikes, and Morris has to grudgingly admire that the Hatter hasn't flinched. If a reptile of any kind was looking at _him _like that, Morris would've long since abandoned the hat in favor of getting as far away from that glare as possible.

"Can I sit down, please?" Ike asks when the Hatter gives no sign of moving.

"Pay the fee, first," the Hatter says, all prompt and bustling efficiency. Only the slight tremor in his hands betrays him, but he seems not to notice.

Ike blinks again and looks to Morris. Morris, as lost as ey is, can only shrug, and the Hatter lets out a long, shuddering sigh that manages to suggest exasperation and condescension in equal measure. Morris grips the handle of his tea pot a little harder. "It's really very simple," the Hatter says, in martyred tones that put Morris's teeth on edge. "Under the Queen's economy, the Tea Party is no longer free."

"Those edicts don't go into effect for another _month_," Morris hisses him, but the Hatter shoots him a glare and the Protocol scrapes over his thoughts. Morris drops his gaze to the pot in his hands. Thinking that the Hatter is a fool and a useless sycophant of the Queen's is all very well and good, it seems, but the Protocol draws the line at actually _doing _something about it.

"Things will go far more smoothly if everyone gets in a little economic practice first," the Hatter says at once, and the Protocol repeats his words in gusty whispers in the back of Morris's thoughts, inaudible to anyone but him. He shakes his head, which does nothing to drive the Protocol into silence but at least makes his feelings known. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Monard's head drop from his shoulder and a second later, the Dormouse starts awake.

"I don't have anything to pay with," Ike says, sounding puzzled.

The Hatter draws himself up. "Well, then I suppose you'll just have to—"

"Bring some with you next time," Morris cuts in, and this, at least, the Protocol cannot object to, because he spoke first and the Tea Party is supposed to be a _partnership_, after all. The Hatter shoots him a venomous stare, but Ike steps around him and claims a seat before he can protest. "For practice."

He fills Ike's cup while Monard butters himself a crumpet and grumbles under his breath, his eyes mere slits of dark brown focused on the Hatter, but before Morris can let himself get swept up in the rhythm of dishes and steam, a pale flamingo steps out of the trees and the Hatter swoops down on them, brandishing his hat. The Hatter seems determined, this time, not to be outmaneuvered; Morris leaves the pot on the table and bounds over to them, slipping his hand into the pocket that still contains the coins Cole gave him yesterday.

"I'll pay for the guests today," Morris says, injecting every ounce of ice he can into the words. The Hatter hisses at him. "You can _warn _them that you'll be wanting this damnable stuff next time." He upends the bag of coins into the Hatter's hat, not caring how many there are or whether they would actually, by the Queen's arbitrary figuring, match the sum that the Hatter expects to bring in today. The flamingo darts him a grateful look and then hastens to the table, flapping their wings in distress the whole way.

The Hatter swells visibly, looking on the brink of explosion, but his hat gives out under the weight of the coins. The whole thing collapses; the coins tumble to the ground with a shattering of dark umber and specks of emerald, and the Hatter is left snarling with nothing but a brim drooping in his hands. Morris grins, feeling as though the lightness in his pockets has infused his chest as well, like he might lift right off the ground and float back to the table in a haze of steam.

He turns on his heel and strides back to his table, leaving the Hatter to clean up the Queen's mess. Today's special tea is a spiced chai, and he decides he's ferociously glad of it; the heady, thick sent and dark taste of the spices will anchor him to the ground and go well with the triumph brewing in his stomach.

The Tea Party is going to stay free. If he has to throttle the Hatter himself to ensure it, it will stay free, and not even the Protocol rumbling through his thoughts like an oncoming storm at that resolution can dissuade him.

* * *

Morris retires to his garden once the party is finished and the dishes dealt with. The garden is surrounded by a thick hedge almost as tall as his house and entered by means of a low tunnel that wasn't quite big enough to accommodate his size when Morris inherited it from Haigha; in the preceding two months, though, the tunnel has expanded to fit him better, and he slips through now without snagging on anything.

The garden within is small and circular and crammed with foliage. Most of it is Haigha's, although Morris knows the neat line of new tomatoes near the entrance are Franco's handiwork; there are rows of strawberries guarded by a prickly blackberry shrug and neat lines of vegetables, cabbages and turnips and carrots and even a few potato plants, rarities in Wonderland since they have to be brought in from distant islands on the Fitful Sea.

At the far end there's a cuptree, the pride and joy of any March Hare and rumored to have been a sapling when the first Alice came. It spreads translucent turquoise leaves over the rest of the garden, softening the sunlight at all hours of the day to ensure that it is never too harsh for the rest of it to thrive, and Morris throws it a fond glance now. Its ashy bark appears bluish through the filter of its leaves, and here and there he can see the swollen purple knots of the cuptree's fruit. They're not ready to open yet, and won't be for at least another few months, but from their size the new cups are coming along nicely.

Morris sticks close to the wall of his house, though, weaving through trellises until he comes to his butter-bush. Its broad orange leaves glisten in the diffused light, limned with the oil coming off the large pods clinging to the branches. Morris gives a sharp, satisfied nod; they're ready for harvesting. He shucks his coat and retrieves a specialized basket from a hook on the wall, then settles himself in front of the butter-bush.

The pods are slimy with oil and have minds of their own, wriggling and squirming like slugs in his grip as he detaches them from their branches and slides them down the narrow chute of the basket's opening—small enough that they cannot escape from its mouth after Morris pushes them in—and it's a challenging enough task to occupy his hands so he can think.

He badly underestimated the Hatter's willingness to follow the _spirit _of the Queen's new laws, not just the letter, in assuming that the Hatter would accept the proper payment from any source so long as it came at all. Morris's ill-defined plans to use Leporidae funds and the goodwill of those fortunate in the early days of the economy in order to pay for everyone to attend as normal hinged on the Hatter turning a blind eye to such activity. If he isn't willing to do that, well…

Morris bites his lip and lunges after a pod that slipped through his fingers. It writhes in disappointment when he catches it again. The Hatter, pompous and arrogant and hot-headed as he is, and showing signs of the slow, memory-eating madness that overtakes all hatters in the end, _might _not notice if Morris finds a way to get fees into the hands of guests before they arrive in the clearing. A drop-off place, perhaps, for coins to be donated and collected as needed. It isn't ideal, of course, considering the risk that someone else might find it and use it for their own ends or, worse, report it to the Queen, but nothing about the economy can really be described as _ideal_. Morris lets out an irritated snort, and jams a pod into his basket harder than is necessary.

If he could get Monard involved, he thinks, that would make everything far easier; Monard knows the Forest better than anyone Morris knows and could find a secure and difficult to discover place for the money to be hidden. Morris doubts that he would have trouble swaying him, either, not after the way he glared during the payment debacle today. Monard, it seems, is no happier about the impending economy than Morris is.

No, the trouble is the Protocol.

The Hatter, not being Leporidae himself, knows nothing of the hidden forces holding Wonderland together, but he _must_ still aware that there are certain unspoken rules that herald consequences if broken. The Protocol would have made sure of that, tugging his thoughts in the right direction and scouring channels into his mind when he took the position in the first place, to guarantee that he never strayed too far from the proper way of things.

Morris squeezes a pod so hard it shoots out from between his fingers and splatters against the wall, leaving a smear of dark yellow goop and darker oil. He glares at it, then reaches out to scrape it onto the earth below. Let it decompose and provide some fertilizer for its mother plant.

The _proper_ way of things includes absolute unity between the Hatter and the March Hare; when the first Alice came and the Protocol was written, the Hatter and the March Hare were the best of friends, partners, possibly lovers and definitely co-conspirators. That set the track for all who followed, and there hasn't been discord at the Tea Party since. Disagreement, certainly—what sort of friends agree on everything all the time?—but always compromise, in the end, and when compromises could not be reached in an equal partnership, the one who spoke first saw their will enforced. The Protocol saw to that.

And now…

Morris slides another pod into the basket and leans back with a sigh, fishing a handkerchief out of his breast pocket to wipe the oil from his fingers. _Now_, with the Queen spreading upheaval through the land, the Protocol rides closer to the surface than Morris has ever felt before. Usually the physical sensation of it is limited to punishments in return for disobeying its orders, or trying to, and even then, when it prevents him from crying, it restricts itself to squeezing his lungs and keeps out of his mind. This afternoon, he felt its presence in his _brain_, like a hard shell corralling his thoughts and rubbing the inside of his mind raw, not quite as harsh as it had been when he met it as a child but still unmistakable in its intent and power. It could have ripped those subversive thoughts out at the roots and burned them to ashes until Morris couldn't remember that he'd ever thought them at all and, even worse, forced him to _like _it.

He isn't sure what, exactly, that means for the future, and he isn't sure he wants to know, but he _can _guess that it will prevent him from defying the Hatter's orders no matter how unreasonable they are. That it seemed to prevent the Hatter from arguing with _him_, too, is not as comforting as he would have expected. The Hatter is louder and more ornery and more accustomed to presiding over the Tea Party while Morris fades into the background and deals with the important parts; if the Protocol defends the one of them who speaks first, it's the Hatter's decisions that will prevail more often than not, not Morris's.

For a moment, Morris stares hopelessly into the oily leaves of the butter-bush, wondering how in Dodgson's name he's going to get out of this without forcing people to pay for the tea and company that ought to be free, and then it comes to him like a sweet breeze. The Protocol has never tried to stop him from _thinking _mutinous thoughts, or from acting in ways that the Hatter wouldn't like but doesn't know about; it's only threatened to prevent him from doing things in direct violation of the Hatter's demands. All he needs do is take care not to get caught, and the Hatter won't order him to do otherwise, and the Protocol need not force him to obey.

The last pod comes free of its branch and slides into the basket. Morris wipes his fingers again, and, as he prepares to tend to the rest of his plants, he scours this new line of reasoning in search of flaws. He finds none, and moreover the Protocol does nothing to correct him, so Morris grins to himself and fetches a pair of snarkhide gloves to rid his garden of weeds.

* * *

"It'll be risky."

Morris slumps in relief. It had taken him over a week to work up the courage to speak to Monard, and then another two days to actually catch him alone; he turned out to be surprisingly difficult to locate outside the bounds of the Tea Party. The Dormouse had listened to an abbreviated explanation of what Morris hopes to accomplish with the economy in silence, his normally sleepy expression replaced with an inscrutable mask of intense concentration. For a long, painful moment, he had said nothing, and then his eyes sparked. And it seems he has no other objection than this.

"_Everything _is risky," Morris says with false cheer. He's going to be smuggling wanted criminals through the Looking Glass in just a little under three weeks; he supposes he ought to get used to taking risks and flaunting the Queen's authority. His heart vibrates with terror just thinking about it, but that only encourages him to stretch his smile wider. "The Queen's made sure of that."

Monard nods, the intent frown still in place, looking not at all like the barely-conscious Dormouse Morris is familiar with. "And it would be better than having our attendance dwindle to nothing," Monard murmurs, his eyes narrowing. "Imagine her majesty's discontent if her plans to turn a profit on the tea trade failed because no one could pay her fees." Morris hadn't, until now. He's been too focused on how it would impact his guests; Monard, perhaps reading this in his expression, gives a sharp nod. "It'd be our heads on the chopping block. Maybe even Gideon's, too."

A vision of the Hatter's headless body flopping in a pool of its own blood flashes past Morris's eyelids, and he feels a spark of vicious glee in the pit of his stomach. The Protocol hisses through his mind, and he stomps on the feeling at once, wondering why it arose in the first place. He _dislikes _the Hatter, yes, but not enough to want him _dead_.

All the same…

Morris shakes himself, and puts the thought more firmly away. "Then you'll help me?" he says, focusing on Monard once more.

"I don't see that I have much choice," Monard says. He shrugs. "I was planning on redistributing what I had anyway, you know. Quietly, not like what _you've _got planned, but with two of us working together we might be able to do it." He cocks his head, frowning at Morris. "I thought about approaching you, actually, but I wasn't sure I could trust you."

Taken aback, Morris can only stare for a moment. He's always thought of Monard as being—well—someone just _there_, a fixture of the table like the tea pots and the tree, just more alive and more prone to snoring. Vaguely, he knows Monard must have a life outside the Tea Party, although on the rare occasion he thought of it Morris imagined that it comprised mostly sleep. That Monard might have as vested an interest in the Tea Party as Morris does never even crossed his mind; Morris pins this realization down and sets it next to his still-muddled thoughts about Clare for later examination.

"Oh," he says.

"Haigha always fell in a bit too closely with Gideon for my tastes," Monard says. His voice, usually whispy and insubstantial during the parties, gyrates around his head, sharp-edged and a richer blue than Morris has ever seen it before. "Franco was better; he _understood_ things, and there was little love lost between him and the Hatter." Monard snorts, and Morris hunches his shoulders as a cold, slimy worm of guilt stirs in his gut. "I thought, you know, for a while, that the Tea Party might have a shot at being—well, it doesn't matter now."

"Doesn't it?" Morris says, feeling as though the worm of guilt has tripled in size and forced its way into his windpipe. Monard fixes him with a long stare, hard and cold as sharpened steel, and Morris has to look away.

"Hasn't since you showed up," Monard says briskly. "There's not a mouse's chance in a Jubjub nest that your family would've let a Jackrabbit be the March Hare while there was a Hare available to take the position." He lets out a broken, lime-green laugh that flashes and dies like lightning. "I thought you weren't too bad. Could have been a lot worse, and you _were _friendly with Franco; that counts for something." _Or it did_, Morris thinks, but he keeps his mouth shut and his eyes downcast. He doesn't even know where Franco _is_, now. "But you didn't know, and you couldn't see, so I figured you'd be another Haigha." Monard squints at him.

His tone has the tenor of an insult, although Morris cannot see why; he would give a lot to live up to Haigha's example, and Dodgson knows he's fallen down in that rather spectacularly. "What would being another Haigha entail?" he asks, and bites down the urge to bristle when Monard lets out a derisive snort.

"Oh, there was nothing overtly _objectionable_ about him," he says. "He stopped Gideon when Gideon was going to be foolish and really hurt the Tea Party. He was a decent March Hare. He did his job perfectly." Morris looks up to see a faint sneer warping Monard's lips. "Not a toe out of line, except taking on Franco as an apprentice. And that was a surprise to everyone, and really it only happened because Franco was brilliant with tea."

He looks hard at Morris, and another coil of guilt joins the first in the pit of Morris's stomach. This one has fangs and comes with barbed recollections of Clare sprinting away from the scarab, and Franco's last words to him, and the bitterness choking Franco's voice at Haigha's wake, and Clare calling him a bastard at the Tea Party, and Morris finds he can't think of anything to say. He stares at his shoes instead, wondering how in the world they ended up talking about _this _when all he wanted to do was secure help in protecting his Tea Party. Monard wrested control of the conversation so artfully that even now, Morris can't quite pinpoint where the shift happened.

"Would that be so bad?" he says, cringing as he hears his own voice and peeking up at Monard. It would be; Morris can see that written all over the hard set of Monard's brow and the tightness around his eyes and the way his lips press together like he's trying to hold in an outpouring of vitriol.

Morris just wishes he knew _why_.

"It's not really your fault, I suppose," Monard says after a chilly moment. "You're blind and still a child." He ignores the flinch and the ugly twist of indignation that Morris is certain accompanies it in his face. Morris is seventeen, hardly a _child_, whatever Monard thinks to the contrary. "And maybe not quite as blind as I assumed." There's something else in Monard's gaze now, sharp and speculative. Morris isn't sure he likes it any better than the cold judgment of before.

"We were talking about the economy problem," he says, soft as a breath, and Monard's eyes spark again.

"Yes," he says, "we were." His tail twitches across the ground, scattering dead leaves. "I believe I know just the place. Leave it to me; I'll arrange to have it protected it and speak to Gideon about not charging real money for the practice month. You can provide the starting funds, and we'll work it out from there."

Morris bows his head, tension leaving his neck and shoulders like rain. Getting money to provide for the first real paid Tea Party will, he suspects, be a simple matter of asking Cole or, failing that, his mother. Neither option promises the unexpected—guilt—of securing Monard's assistance.

_Or maybe_, Morris thinks as he walks home and turns the conversation over in his mind, _it was Monard who secured mine_.


End file.
